SOCIAL FRANCE 



AT THE TIME OF PHILIP AUGUSTUS 



BY 



ACHILLE LUCHAIRE 

Membre de VInstitut 



AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION 

FROM THE SECOND EDITION OF THE FRENCH 

BY 

EDWARD BENJAMIN KREHBIEL, Ph.D. 

Professor of European History, Ldand Stanford Junior University 




NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1912 






COPTRIOBT, 1912, 
BY 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
Published June, 1912 



THE QUINN & SODEN CO. PRESS 
RAHWAY, N. J. 





A' 



x^f 



o 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 

Among the pleasantest experiences of my first visit to Paris 
was my meeting with M. Luchaire. It chanced that he had 
taken extensive notes in the provincial archives of France 
upon the period of Innocent III, a field in which I was inter- 
ested, and it was to consult him about these that I visited him. 
His knowledge of English was not much greater than my 
limited acquaintance with his mother-tongue, and the inter- 
view was hardly a success from any standpoint except the 
humorous. A subsequent conversation by means of an inter- 
preter proved more fruitful, and I came away with what was 
verily M. Luchaire 's treasure, — his manuscript notes, which 
represented years of patient and costly labor in various parts 
of France. The boundless kindness and confidence indicated 
by his intrusting these notes to me, and his subsequent 
interest in me and my plans, left me with an ardent desire 
to requite his services. It was not given to me to do so 
during his lifetime. If, however, I succeed in the following 
pages in bringing English readers who do not know French 
to enjoy the work of this charming Frenchman who did not 
know English, I shall feel that I have in some measure ap- 
propriately repaid the debt I owe him. 

It is, however, not only, or even chiefly, my personal rela- 
tions with this French scholar that prompted me to undertake 
this translation. I am a firm believer in social history, indeed 
in anything that will bring out the human side of the past. 
It is for this reason that Luchaire 's work appealed to me and 
that it is now placed before English readers. That the book 
has its shortcomings I know; that it is prolix in some parts 
and often repetitious I am fully aware; but that, even as it 
is, it is worth translating I am confident. 

That the translation will meet with the approval of its read- 
ers I am not so sure. It is intended to be a faithful rendering 
of the original, without deviation in any essential. The in- 
equalities in the text are in some measure, no doubt, to be 



iv TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 

attributed to the translator; in part they find their explana- 
tion in the unevenness of the original, which is accounted for 
by M. Halphen's preface. 

For invaluable aid I take this place to express my indebted- 
ness to Miss Ella Beaver, Mr. Louis Lengfeld, Miss Belle 
Rankin, and Miss Marjorie Seeley, students in Leland Stanford 
Junior University. 

Edward B, KJaEHBiEL. 

Stanford Univkrsity, 
April 15, 1912. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Translator's Preface . . . . . iii 

Preface vii 

I. The Material and Spiritual Condition of 

THE People ....... 1 

II. Parishes and Priests . . . ' . . .37 

III. The Student . . . . . . .63 

IV. The Canon . 104 

V. The Bishop 142 

VI. The Monastic Spirit .179 

VII. Monastic Life . . . . . . . 212 

VIII. The Noble at War 249 

IX. The Noble in Time of Peace . . . . 306 

X. Feudal Finance and Chivalry . . s. .325 

XL The Noble Dame 350 

XII. Courtesy and the Lettered Nobility . .374 

XIII. Peasants and Burghers 381 

Index . 429 



PREFACE 

This study on French society at the time of Philip 
Augustus was the sole unpublished work found among the 
papers of M. Achille Luehaire. After having determined to 
write an exhaustive history of the reign of Philip Augustus, 
and after having for five years (1895-1900) made that reign 
the subject of his courses at the Sorbonne, Luehaire in 1901 
turned his efforts in other directions and abandoned a project 
whicKliad seemed on the point of coming to fruition. 

The appearance of the first parts of Alexander Cartellieri 's 
Philipp II. August, Eonig von Frankreich, no doubt largely 
influenced Luehaire to take this action. The book of Car- 
tellieri, though perhaps too minute and somewhat lacking in 
perspective, proved to be conscientious and accurate in every 
respect. If a French history of Philip Augustus was to be 
given to the public, was it not sensible to await the completion 
of this German work? 

Social history, however, remained outside of the domain 
appropriated by Cartellieri. This was a gap worth filling. 
Luehaire had carefully kept the manuscript of the lectures 
he had delivered on this particular subject, and after having, 
in 1899, extracted a chapter on the University of Paris,^ he, in 
1900, entered upon a complete publication in the Seances et 
travaux de VAcademie des sciences morales et politiques. Two 
chapters appeared in succession in this collection entitled 
L'Etat materiel et moral de la population (1900), and 
Paroisses et les cures (1901)^; then, having claimed the field, 

* L'Universite de Paris sous Philippe- Augusts. Paris, Chevalier- 
Marescq, 1899. 59 pp. (Forms a part of the Bibliotheque internationale 
de I'enseignement superieur published under the direction of M. F. 
Picavet.) Chapter III of this volume is a reproduction of this article 
with a new introduction. 

2 These form Chapters I and II of this volume. The part on the 
cult of relics also appeared with a special introduction in La Revue de 
Paris, annee 1900, IV, pp. 189-198 {Le culte des reliques), and the part 
treating of the capuchonnes in La Grande Revue, annee 1900, XIII, 
pp. 317-328 [Un essai de revolution sociale sous Philippe- Auguste) . 



viii PKEFACE 

Luehaire postponed the publication of the other chapters. 
However, in January, 1908, he published an article on mar- 
riages and divorces in the feudal world ^ ; and he freely drew 
on his materials for the volume on the reigns of Louis VII, 
Philip Augustus, and Louis VIII, which he contributed to 
Lavisse's Histoire de France in 1901.* 

In his caution to leave nothing to the accident of im- 
provisation, Luehaire prepared his lectures with such care 
that the process of shaping them for the press would have 
been a simple matter for him: all that was required was to 
remove occasional prolixities, recast the lectures into a limited 
number of chapters, and now and then correct the form. This 
labor, which a sudden death prevented Luehaire from com- 
pleting, was a delicate task for another to undertake, I have 
voluntarily restricted my alterations to such as were strictly 
necessary, and, when omissions appeared necessary, I have, 
as far as possible,^ adopted the method pursued by Luehaire 
himself in the pages which he had published. I have touched 
the style but slightly, and then with great caution : the author 
alone could retouch the work satisfactorily in this respect. 
Had he lived, he would undoubtedly have added several com- 
plementary chapters on the mendicant orders,^ on the king 
and his court, on commerce and corporations, etc. He would, 
perhaps, have added bibliographical information and notes. 
But, such as it is, I believe that the book may be useful to 
historians, and that, like the six volumes on Innocent III, 
it will charm and instruct the public interested in the past. 

Louis Halphen. 

• Au temps de la feodalite. Mariages et divorces. Revue hleue, 
1908, ler semestre, pp. 39-44. This appears in Chapter XI of this 
volume. 

* Some of the pages of that work are, in consequence, repeated in this. 
" During the academic year 1899-1900 Luehaire gave four lectures on 

the mendicant orders; but the manuscript of these lectures was not in 
a state to justify publishing them. Besides, the substance of the lec- 
tures is incorporated in the pages devoted to this subject in Lavisse, 
Histoire de France, III, Ire partie, pp. 352-363. 



SOCIAL FRANCE 

AT THE TIME OF PHILIP AUGUSTUS 

CHAPTER I 

THE MATERIAL AND SPIEITUAL CONDITION OP 
THE PEOPLE 

*' The world is ill; it grows so old that it relapses into 
infancy. Common report has it that Antichrist has been 
born at Babylon and that the day of judgment is at hand." 
In writing these lines, Rigord, the monk of Saint-Denis, was 
ignorant of the fact that other monks had expressed the same 
sentiment in all preceding centuries. Why this discourage- 
ment and these sinister predictions? Because the popes of 
his day were short-lived and succeeded each other with a 
strange rapidity; because Saladin had taken Jerusalem in 
1188, that most fateful of all years, — " those born in it had 
only twenty-two, instead of thirty-two teeth "; finally, be- 
cause natural calamities and scourges from heaven and earth, 
one after another, fell upon men and made them despair of 
their future. 

Earthquakes, especially, dismayed them. Anjou was shaken 
in 1207 ; Normandy, in 1214 ; Gascony, in 1223. The tremor 
of March 3, 1206, was felt at the same time in Burgundy and 
Limousin. According to the monk of Saint-Martial, the 
shocks came in the middle of the night. Monks, saying their 
offices in the choir, took to flight, and laymen leaped from 
their beds ; it was observed that even the birds trembled with 
fear and that water-courses were more boisterous than usual ; 
and, to appease an irate Heaven, an extraordinary procession 
was arranged at Limoges. 

Within forty-three years (1180-1223) fourteen cyclones ran 
riot with frightful ravages. Harvests and vineyards were 
destroyed, houses demolished, roofs carried away, belfries and 



2 SOCIAL FRANCE 

towers beaten down, and turrets overthrown. The storm of 
Dun-le-Roi, in 1206, crushed a noblewoman with her two chil- 
dren beneath its ruins. That of 1221 lasted eight days and 
killed forty persons in the vicinity of Paris and Beauvais. 
While mass was being celebrated in the chateau of Pierref onds, 
lightning struck it; the officiating priest and twenty-four 
assistants were grievously wounded; five were killed. The 
chalice containing the Host was reduced to powder; but, lo! 
the Host itself remained untouched. 

One can imagine the damage done by floods. There were 
no means of forewarning those who dwelt by streams; reser- 
voirs, dams, and dikes hardly existed ; the bridges, overloaded 
with houses and crowded with shops, were not built to resist 
the swelling of the waters. The inundations of 1185 at Metz, 
of 1195 at Auxerre, of 1205 at Caen, of 1213 at Limoges 
left doleful traces. In 1196 the two bridges of the Seine at 
Paris were carried away, and Philip Augustus found himself 
oblige^ to quit the Cite and take refuge on Mont Sainte- 
Genevieve. The flood of 1219 rendered the Petit pont unap- 
proachable, and many burghers returned to their homes by 
boat. The monk of Sainte-Genevieve, who was an eye-witness, 
describes the enormous rising of the Seine in 1206, the year 
in which all the streams simultaneously overflowed their 
banks : 

" In the month of December, 1206, God smote the kingdom of 
the French. Rains fell with extreme violence, streams became tor- 
rents, the largest trees were rooted up, and in certain cities buildings 
were utterly destroyed. But of all places, Paris, the capital and the 
soul of France, was most sorely tried. The city was entirely in- 
undated, and was affected to its very foundations; one could go 
about the streets and squares only by boat. Most of the houses 
fell, and those which remained upright were so shaken by the unend- 
ing pressure of the waters that they became a menace. The stone 
bridge, known as the Petit pont, could not resist the impact 
of the torrent; great cracks were already visible and its collapse 
was momentarily expected. Thus was the precious city, the queen 
of them all, plunged into sorrow. Priests moaned, virgins mourned, 
Paris succumbed under the weight of her grief, and no one could 
console her." 

Science has not yet found the means of compelling over- 
flowing streams to return to their beds, but our fathers knew 



MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 3 

one : they instituted processions in which they exhibited relics. 
The citizens of Paris, in 1206, had recourse to their favorite 
saint, Genevieve. A procession forms on the height on the 
left bank of the river, with the relics of tha saint in the lead. 
It reaches the Petit pont. " To cross it," relates the monk, 
" it is imperative to lean neither to left nor to right, but to 
keep exactly in the middle. The passage over the bridge, 
which threatens to crumble under the furious blows of the 
water, is exceedingly dangerous, — ^but Genevieve with her 
people crosses the raging Seine : the bridge supports her less 
than she supports the bridge." At last the cortege reaches 
Notre-Dame, and forthwith the waters begin to recede and 
the rain ceases. From the church comes the saint, still fol- 
lowed by the citizens; the bridge totters, but is crossed a 
second time, and the relics of Genevieve resume their place 
in the sanctuary. Half an hour later, at nightfall, after 
every one has returned home, the bridge falls. Three arches 
are carried away by the current. 

Next to wat^r, fire was the daily terror in medieval cities, 
with their narrow, winding streets lined with overcrowded, 
wooden houses. A stone house was uncommon. The authori- 
ties gave a bounty to citizens who built of stone : in the little 
village of Rue in Picardy, they were exempt from taxes. In 
these vast collections of inflammable materials, with only the 
most rudimentary means of fighting fire (we know of no 
text of this epoch which makes even the slightest allusion to 
the organization of a relief corps), a burning house menaced 
the whole quarter; often the entire city. Repeated fires be- 
came dreadful. From 1200 to 1225, Rouen burned six times. 
Not even the largest stone structures, churches, and the 
enormous fortresses were spared. The keep of Gisors burned 
in 1189, on the very day that Richard the Lion-Hearted made 
his entrance. When the chateau of Pompadour, in Limousin, 
burned, the keep collapsed and twenty persons perished in 
the burning pile. The flames reached the houses and streets 
so rapidly that it was impossible to escape. In 1223, two 
hundred persons were victims of fire in the village of Verlene, 
in the district of Nontron. 

In years when drought prevailed, or streams, springs, 
and wells dried up, fires multiplied from one end of France 



4 SOCIAL FRANCE 

to the other. In 1188, Rouen, Troyes, Beauvais, Provins, 
Arras, Poitiers, and Moissac were the prey of flames. Some 
of the details of the fire of Troyes have come down to us. 
The fire began at night on the fair-grounds and quickly spread 
to the residences. The abbey of Notre-Dame aux Nonnains, 
the collegiate church of Saint-]&tienne which had just been 
rebuilt, the palace of the counts of Champagne, and the 
cathedral, Saint-Pierre, all burned. The flames moved so 
rapidly that the monks of Notre-Dame had not time to escape 
and were burned alive. 

These scourges of fire also occurred in years of storm and 
lightning. In 1194, a number of towns and villages were 
struck by lightning. This was the year of the great fire at 
Chartres, which destroyed so many unfortunates and almost 
obliterated the ancient cathedral. Struck by the frequency of 
the fires, popular imagination accepted the most sinister ex- 
planations. Rigord relates that ravens were seen flying from 
one place to another in the burning towns; in their beaks 
they carried burning coals and set fire to all houses which 
had escaped. 

To these not infrequent catastrophes were added systematic 
fires set by men-at-arms. It is well known that war at that 
time meant ravage, and, especially, the burning of towns, 
chateaux, and cities belonging to the enemy. Arson was a 
military operation, well regulated and organized; in short, 
an institution. Besides its foragers, who pillaged the fields, 
every army had its houtefeux, charged especially with burning 
barns and houses. Nearly every page of the Chansons des 
Lorrains shows them at work. The hosts of Garin are get- 
ting under way to concentrate at Douai. " The incendiaries 
fall upon the villages, the surprised inhabitants are burned 
or led captive with manacled hands. The smoke thickens, 
the flames grow, and the terrified peasants and shepherds 
flee in every direction." Further on it is the great city of 
Lyon which is captured and sacked. " On the morrow [after 
the pillage] Duke Begon on arising, commands fire, which 
is prepared and set in a hundred places. No one will ever 
know the number of those who perished in this great con- 
flagration. From the fields the retreating army could 
see the towers crumble, the monasteries burst open, and 



MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 5 

could hear the despairing cries of the women and the little 
folk." 

The same scenes occurred at Verdun and Bordeaux, where 
" eighty citizens, not counting women and children, were 
reduced to ashes." Feudalism seemed to take a ferocious 
delight in seeing flames consume burghers' houses and the 
villeins who resided in them. One of the heroes of the 
Chanson des Lorrains, Bernard de Naisil, was among the 
defenders of Bordeaux. Resting his arms on the window of 
the chateau and holding in one hand the helmet he had just 
removed, he gazed upon the burning city. Said he to 
Fromont: " There, we are rid of a great care; Bordeaux is 
in flames. We are much stronger than we were this morning. ' ' 

History and fiction combine their testimony on this point. 
It is enough to enumerate the places burned in the wars of 
Philip Augustus : Chatillon-sur-Seine, Dreux, le Mans, Evreux, 
Dieppe, Tours, Angers, Lille. The fire of Lille, ordered by 
the king of France to punish the defection of its citizens, 
*' burned everything, even to the peaty soil of the place," 
says the historian, "William of Armorica. If one would know 
what such a campaign of arson, a regular part of all wars 
of the time, meant, he should read the accounts of the expe- 
dition of Louis of France, son of Philip Augustus, against 
Flanders in 1214, several months before the battle of Bouvines, 
when Nieuport, Steenvorde, Bailleul, Hazebrouck, Cassel, not 
to mention villages and hamlets, were systematically given 
over to the flames. At Bailleul the incendiaries barely escaped 
being victims of their own work. The chronicle of Bethune 
relates that the streets were so obstructed with fugitives and 
carts, and the night was so dark, that Louis and his knights 
had great difficulty in making their way to the gates. 

Epidemics, another sign of divine wrath, ran an unob- 
structed course among the anemic and squalid people in the 
undrained and unpaved cities, where houses were nothing 
more than leaky hovels, and streets, veritable sewers. At 
Paris, ' ' the most beautiful of cities, ' ' the citizens buried their 
dead in the meadow of Champeaux, the site of the present 
market. The cemetery was not closed. Pedestrians crossed 
it and markets were held there. In rainy seasons this 
charnel-house became a nauseous bog. It was only in 1187 



/ 



6 SOCIAL FRANCE 

that Philip Augustus built a stone wall around it, and then 
out of respect for the dead, rather than for the public health. 

Two years later the king and the Parisians determined 
to make an attempt at paving, but only on the main streets 
which led to the city gates. The rest remained a slough, a 
choice breeding-place for those contagious diseases against 
which the middle ages knew no preventive or curative meas- 
ures. Men submitted to them as to a chastisement from on 
high, a divine fire, ignis sacer, ignis infernalis. For the sick, 
those who burned, ardentes, the remedies always remained 
the same: processions, public prayers, expositions [of relics] 
in the churches, and supplications to some healing saint, Saint 
Firman or Saint Antony. At Paris, persons ill of the plague 
were brought to Sainte-Genevieve or to Notre-Dame, with- 
out fear of aggravating the epidemic. Besides contagions, 
there was leprosy, the perennial scourge of all France, a 
respecter of neither rich nor poor. And often, in addition to 
all these ills, as though to complete the work of war and pest, 
famine, most destructive of all, held sway. 

It takes some effort of imagination to picture the economic 
condition of medieval France, especially the agricultural con- 
ditions, so different from those of to-day. The extensive for- 
ests and moors, the limited arable land, the rudimentary 
agricultural methods, the incessant compromising and anni- 
hilating of the peasants' efforts by war, or by the hard feudal 
laws of the chase, all explain why land yielded small returns, 
and why the necessary balance between production and popu- 
lation did not exist, except in years of abundance. The in- 
adequacy of traffic increased that of production. Since each 
district was isolated, and currency was scarce, nobles and 
clerics depended very largely upon incomes in kind from 
their tenants; and these incomes, by way of caution, they 
stored in their granaries and cellars. The subjects, the agri- 
culturists, lived on what remained after the deduction of the 
seigniors' portion. In good years the surplus of grain and 
wine might be sold, but the poor and insecure roads, and the 
enormous tolls and duties laid on goods by the seigniors, 
shackled trade. Markets were poorly provisioned; produce, 
half of which nowadays enters into trade, was then almost 
entirely consumed at home, and towns were correspondingly 



MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 7 

less populous and trade less active. And thus it came about 
that in normal years the absence of a demand and the infre- 
quency of transactions depreciated prices; whereas, in years 
of want, the supply found itself suddenly far beneath the 
demand and prices rose to frightful figures. There was some 
improvement over the eleventh century, in which forty-eight 
famine years are recorded; yet, in the reign of Philip Au- 
gustus, eleven famines occurred. Men died of hunger, on 
an average, one year in every four. The famine of 1195, 
following in the wake of the hurricane which had destroyed 
the crops of 1194, was heartrending, because it lasted four 
years. Grain, wine, oil, and salt reached extraordinary prices. 
People ate grape-skins in place of bread and even dead ani- 
mals and roots. 

On Easter-day, 1195, Alix, the lady of Rumilly (a seigniory 
of the diocese of Troyes), was surprised to see the parochial 
mass very poorly attended. The cure informed her that most 
of the parishioners were busy hunting roots in the fields to 
appease their hunger. Touched by pity, Alix caused provi- 
sions to be distributed, and commanded that forever after 
one-third of the tithes, which belonged to her, should be 
remitted to the parishioners on Easter-day; and, besides, each 
of them was to be given a five-pound loaf of bread. But 
what could charity accomplish in the face of so enormous a 
disaster! " In 1197 a countless throng of persons died of 
hunger " (innumeri fame perempti sunt), says the chronicle 
of Reims. Such expressions as multi fame perierunt, mori- 
untur fame millia millium, appear again and again in the 
histories, and they must be taken literally. 

Hunger in this period meant not only privation, misery, 
and suffering ; it meant death. To understand to what extent 
it decimated whole provinces of France, one should consider 
what happens even nowadays in certain districts of South 
Africa, Australia, and Hindustan. Even the rich and power- 
ful suffered; the chronicler of Liege states that they were 
reduced to eating carrion. And he adds: " As for the poor, 
they died of hunger (multitudo pauperum moritur). They 
fell dead in the streets. We could see them lying at our 
church doors at early morning, moaning, dying, and begging 
for the alms which were distributed at the first hour." But 



8 SOCIAL FRANCE 

the monks themselves were in want. " In that year [1197] 
the wheat gave out. From Epiphany to August we had to 
spend more than a hundred marks for bread. We had neither 
wine nor beer. Fifteen days before harvest we were still 
eating rye bread." 

The cries of the starving made themselves heard far be- 
yond the boundaries, in Italy, and even in Rome. Pope Inno- 
cent III, in a letter to the bishop of Paris, naturally attributes 
this scourge to the wrath of God, flagellum Dei. It is a pun- 
ishment for the sin which Philip Augustus, king of France, 
committed in putting aside his legitimate wife, Ingeborg of 
Denmark. 

It is the misfortune of the times that each of these calami- 
ties engendered others. Famine produced brigandage. " To 
escape death by starvation, many persons became robbers and 
were hanged," says the chronicler of Anchin. He misstates 
the facts: the greater part of the brigands lived on their 
thefts with impunity. 



Imagine a social state in which security for property and 
person does not exist; no police, and little justice, especially 
outside of the larger cities; each one defends his purse and 
his life as best he can. 

Robbers operate in broad day and on all roads, by pref- 
erence attacking sanctuaries where gold and precious objects 
abound. The chronicler of Saint-Martial of Limoges, Ber- 
nard Itier, notes the frequent disappearance of silver vases, 
golden chalices, and manuscripts ornamented with jewels. A 
sneak-thief carried away the famous gold reliquary given 
by Charlemagne to the chapter of Saint-Julien de Brioude ; he 
was never again seen, and the canons could do nothing but 
launch a terrible litany of anathemas against him : 

" May he be accursed living and dying, eating and drinking, 
standing and sitting! Be he accursed in the fields, the forests, the 
meadows, the pastures, the mountains, the valleys, the villages, the 
cities! May his life be short, and his goods pillaged by strangers! 
May an incurable palsy fall upon his eyes, his brow, his beard, his 
throat, his tongue, his lips, his neck, his breast, his lungs, his ears, 
his nostrils, his shoulders, his arms, etc.! May he be like a thirsty 



MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 9 

hind, tracked by his enemies! May his children be orphaned and 
his wife widowed and crazed ! " 

A poor defence this excommunication of malefactors! As 
though. France had not enough of her own, England sent 
her audacious thieves in addition. In 1218, an islander from 
heyond the Channel attempted to appropriate the silver ves- 
sels and candelabra of Notre-Dame in Paris. After having 
remained concealed for several days in the top of the nave, 
then filled with timber-work, he came down at night by means 
of a rope with loops to seize the objects he coveted. Unhap- 
pily for him, the lighted candles set fire to the silk hangings 
arranged for the feast of the Assumption ; a blaze flared up, 
people gathered, and the thief was taken. 

Some of the more dangerous brigands moved about in 
armed bands, plundering travelers and merchants, burning 
farmsteads, and even attacking small villages. In 1206, a 
group of crusaders, returning from Constantinople, were 
traveling toward Picardy, their native land. They had es- 
caped the Lombards, and the Alpine mountaineers; but at 
Saint-Rambert, near Belley, they were assailed by a band of 
brigands. Their baggage was plundered; and, as they car- 
ried with them precious relics, they were eager to redeem 
themselves. Some leagues further on, at Ambrenay, there 
came another band and another ransom. And, without doubt, 
it was the same for a great part of the journey. 

These parasites of the highway were, for the most part, 
mercenary soldiers, Aragonese, Navarrese, Basques, Braban- 
ters, and Germans — desperadoes come to enter the service of 
kings and princes. When their pay stopped, they robbed and 
murdered on their own account. These routiers or cot- 
tereaux of Philip Augustus, who reappear in the " grand 
companies " of Charles V, and the ecorcheurs of Charles ^ 
VII, are an open sore of society, a necessary evil, an instru- 
ment of war which all the world decries, yet which no one 
can do without. In vain the church excommunicates these 
brigands and fulminates against those who employ them. 
They supply the lack of feudal forces, therefore are they 
seen in all campaigns and in all wars. Their chiefs rendered 
such important services that kings made them great person- 



10 SOCIAL FRANCE 

ages, well paid and provided with titles and fiefs. Three of 
the bandits thus honored remain celebrated: Mercadier, the 
friend and general-in-ehief of Richard the Lion-Hearted ; 
Cadoc, the ally of Philip Augustus ; and Fulc de Breaute, the 
agent of John Lackland. 

The ravages of these paid or unpaid hordes in hostile, and 
even in friendly territory, were simply frightful. In north- 
ern France the Capetians, the Plantagenets, and certain counts 
of Flanders and Champagne were able to restrain the scourge 
and combat it with success, — but what could be done beyond 
the Loire in Berry, Auvergne, Poitou, Gascony, Languedoc, 
and Provence, regions more'diflficult of defense and surveil- 
lance ? There the highwayman flourished ; fires, murders, and 
rape everywhere marked his passage; especially did he prey 
on religious houses and churches ; he seemed to hate the priest 
and to feel an obligation to outrage everything which per- 
tained to religion and to worship. This was because the 
clerics had more that was worth taking, and because by ex- 
communication they aroused the people against him. The 
brigands of Berry burned churches at pleasure and took cap- 
tive whole troops of priests and monks. " They called them 
chantres in derision, ' ' says Rigord, ' ' and said to them, ' Come, 
chanters, intone your^ psalms, ' and at the same instant they 
showered on them blows with their fists and with rods. 
Beaten thus, some died ; others escaped the torment of a long 
imprisonment only by paying ransom. These demons tram- 
pled the sacred Host under foot, and made garments for their 
concubines out of the altar-cloths." The prior of Vigeois 
tells us that a chief of one of these bands sold monks at 
eighteen sous a head. Must we think that the chroniclers ex- 
aggerate? In 1204, a letter of Innocent III formally accuses 
an archbishop of Bordeaux of living surrounded by brigands, 
and^ of governing his province through terror of them ; he told 
his retainers what blows to strike and participated in the 
profits. 

Some years later the Albigensian war broke out. Naturally 
leaning toward heresy, the brigands rushed to Languedoc; 
without their aid the counts of Toulouse and Foix would 
never have been able to resist the chevaliers of Simon de 
Montfort for so long a time. Masters of the abbey at Moissac, 



MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 11 

some brigands amused themselves the whole day by ringing 
the bells. In the cathedral of Sainte-Marie at Oloron, in 
Beam, they profaned the Host, decked themselves in priestly 
fineries, and pretended to sing the mass. These pleasantries 
were accompanied by their usual misdeeds ; burning churches, 
and ransoming or tormenting priests. The catholic chronicler, 
Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, is indignant at the extent of this 
sacrilege. Yet the crusaders had no right to reproach their 
foes : Simon de Montfort also hired brigands, among others the 
Spaniard, Martin Algais, who, to be sure, deserted him and 
went over to the count of Toulouse. The catholics having cap- 
tured Algais in 1212, first dragged him at a horse's tail, and 
then hanged him. In a letter directed to the king of Aragon, 
the inhabitants of Toulouse complained of the extreme severity 
of the bishops : 

" They exeommunieate us because we use brigands ; yet they 
themselves employ them. Do they not admit to their friendship 
and board those who killed the abbot of Eaunes, and mutilated the 
religious of Bolbonne?" 

It is instructive to hear the frightened accents in which an 
abbot of Sainte-Genevieve recounts to his monks the vicissi- 
tudes of a journey from Paris to Toulouse — *' the length of 
the way, the danger in crossing streams, the danger from 
thieves, the danger from bandits, Aragonese and Basque." 
He made his way across ruined and deserted plains, having 
before his eyes only the signs of desolation, most mournful 
sights; villages in ashes, houses in ruins, church walls half- 
crumbled, everything destroyed to the very ground, and 
human habitations become the lairs of wild beasts. " I con- 
jure you, my brethren, ' ' says the traveler in closing, ' ' to pray 
to God and the Blessed Virgin for me. If They judge me ca- 
pable of further service to our church, may They show me the 
grace of helping me back, safe and sound, to Paris." 

Beyond the Rhone, in the unhappy province of Aries, 
nominally governed by the emperor of Germany, brigandage 
and feudal anarchy were endemic. Pope Celestine III enu- 
merated for Archbishop Imbert the various categories of 
malefactors whom he ought to punish: 



12 SOCIAL FRANCE 

" Deal rigorously with those who despoil the shipwrecked or annoy 
travelers and merchants; excommunicate those who dare to establish 
new tolls. I know that your province is the prey of Aragonese, 
Brabanters, and other bands of strangers; smite thevp., but smite 
also those who hire these brigands and receive them into their 
chateaux and villages." 

The church exerted herself but, limited to spiritual arms, 
accomplished nothing. Sometimes, when the deeds of the brig- 
ands became altogether intolerable, seigniors and kings permit- 
ted a few executions. One day Richard the Lion-Hearted sur- 
rounded a band of Gascons near Aixe, in Limousin, and 
inflicted various kinds of punishments on them: he drowned 
some in the Vienne, cut the throats of others, and put out 
the eyes of eighty of them. The brigands of Berry, being 
poorly paid by Philip Augustus, revolted and devastated the 
country. The king induced them to come to Bourges under 
the pretext of giving them their pay. But, once in the city, 
the gates were closed, and the king's men-at-arms attacked, 
disarmed, and deprived them of all the money they had stolen. 
But generally the crimes of highwaymen went unpunished, 
the nobles being their accomplices, or not daring to act against 
them. The evil steadily grew. Bands of plunderers on the 
march were augmented by the addition of all disreputable 
and outlawed characters: vagabonds, fugitive monks, un- 
frocked priests, and nuns escaping from the cloister. 

The terrified inhabitants of central France had long since 
reached the absolute limit of human endurance. About 1182 
the point of saturation was reached, and from the excess of 
calamity and despair there emerged a popular movement, in 
itself something uncommon. A profound agitation occurred, 
a combined effort of rich and poor, of nobles and villeins, 
with the purpose of establishing a military force to keep order. 
The issue at stake was to destroy brigandage and make life 
tolerable for all. 

As in all great crises of this character, a celestial vision 
gave the original impetus. The Virgin appeared to a carpenter 
of Puy-en-Velay, named Durand Dujardin, and showed him 
a picture of herself holding Christ in her arms, and bearing 
this inscription: Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona 
nobis pacem. Then she instructed him to seek the bishop of 



MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 13 

Puy and organize a brotherhood of all who desired the main- 
tenance of peace. In the eleventh century the episcopacy had 
organized associations of the peace of God, but, after a 
time, in consequence of poor organization, most of these 
leagues dissolved. This, now, was not only the peace of God, 
but also the peace of Mary, the great divinity of Puy, the 
patroness of the cathedral, the Virgin before whom the pil- 
grims defiled. 

The carpenter's society grew with astonishing rapidity, ] 
spread to neighboring regions, and soon to all the provinces 
of central and southern France. Within a few months, from 
the end of December, 1182, to April, 1183, an army of peace 
was formed in each district. And this astonishing departure 
aroused the enthusiasm of Rigord, the monk of Saint-Denis, 
so that he exclaimed: " God has hearkened to the wretches 
who have groaned so long in oppression and affliction. He has 
sent a savior, not an emperor, not a king, not a prince of 
the church, but a poor man, Durand. ' ' The legend, of course, 
grew richer as it spread. The chronicler, Gervase of Canter- 
bury, describes the carpenter as a sort of Christ, who preached 
the word and was followed by twelve apostles, twelve citizens 
of Puy. 

Strange to say, a northern chronicler, a Premonstratensian 
of Laon, does not accept the supernatural origin of the society 
of peace, but gives a rational explanation of it. According 
to him, it was a piece of fraud perpetrated by a canon of 
Puy. Seeing that the brigands hindered pilgrims from com- 
ing to Notre-Dame, and that the profits of the church from 
that source threatened to cease, he and a young man, one of 
his friends, exploited the devout simplicity of the carpenter, 
Durand. The friend, dressed like a woman, with a sparkling 
crown of jewels on his head, appeared as the Virgin Mary 
to the artisan, who was praying in church, and charged him 
to make her pleasure known to the people ; those who failed 
to observe her wishes would die within a year. Notified by 
the carpenter, the citizens immediately flocked into the church, 
and the canon, speaking in the name of the man who saw 
the vision, informed his listeners that the Virgin had obtained, 
from her all-powerful Son, peace for all men, and those who 
refused to swear peace and opposed the action of the society 



14 SOCIAL FRANCE 

would be stricken by sudden death. The crowd hastened 
to take the oath, the society was established, and soon filled 
town and country. 

The account of Geoffrey, prior of Vigeois, in Limousin, who 
wrote near the scene of these events, gives the mean between 
the miraculous tradition and the entirely rational account 
of the chronicler of Laon: 

" God, who exalts the weak and puts the powerful to shame, 
touched the spirit of a man of lowest degree, and of humble appear- 
ance, a simple and timid carpenter of Puy. He sought Peter, Bishop 
of Puy, and laid before him the necessity of securing peace. The 
bishop was much astonished at this sermon coming from lips so 
base, and the crowd began to jeer at him. But when Christmas 
came the «arpenter had more than a hundred adherents who had 
sworn to the pact of peace. Soon he had five thousalid of them; 
after Easter one could no longer count them." 

Whether it came from God or man, the brotherhood of Puy 
itself is beyond all doubt. As a means of recognition, the 
brothers wore a uniform, a small hood of white cloth or 
linen ; whence their name capucJionnes, capuciati, or ' ' white 
hoods." From these hoods hung two bands of the same mate- 
rial — one falling over the back, the other over the breast. 
" It resembled the pallium of an archbishop," says the prior 
of Vigeois. To the front band there was attached the miracu- 
lous emblem — a pewter badge showing the Virgin and Child 
and the words, Agnus Dei. Each Pentecost the members of 
the association paid an assessment. They swore to observe 
the rules of good conduct, to go to mass, not to game, blas- 
pheme, frequent taverns, wear foppish garments, or carry 
poniards. An organization to proceed against the brigands 
was undertaken. It was, first of all, necessary to prevent 
being like them; discipline and morality alone could deserve 
victory from God. Some of the brethren lived saintly lives ; 
indeed, miracles were performed oa the graves of certain 
of the '' white hoods " killed by the brigands. The soldiers 
of this army of uplift formed an intimate free-masonry, 
whose members swore absolute devotion to each other. If 
a ' ' white hood ' ' had by chance killed a man, and the brother 
of the victim was a member of the society, he was expected 



MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 15 

to take the murderer home with him, give him the kiss of 
peace, and sit and drink with him. There is Christian charity- 
carried to heroism! 

The institution spread to all classes of society; it included 
barons, bishops, abbots, monks, simple clerics, burghers, peas- 
ants, even women. Societies similar to that of Velay were 
established in Auvergne, Berry, Aquitaine, Gascony, and 
Provence. Members of these associations called themselves 
** the peace-lovers," or simply " the sworn." Their number 
was considerable; still the chronicles exaggerate it: numerus 
infinitus. One would like to know how they accomplished 
their difficult task of healing society, to understand the or- 
ganization of their armies, to see them on the march and in 
battle with the brigands. But, save for two or three episodes, 
all these details are lacking. 

In 1183, '* the sworn " of Auvergne massacred three thou- 
sand brigands, a victory which, it is said, did not cost the life 
of a single brother. Soon a concerted action was arranged be- 
tween the associates of Berry, Limousin, and Auvergne. The 
brigands en masse took refuge in the little town of Charenton, 
in Bourbonnais, while the army of the allies collected at Dun- 
le-Roi. The seignior of Charenton, Ebbe VII, was requested 
to expel the brigands from his territory, something easier to 
command than to do. Ebbe had recourse to a ruse: he 
strongly urged the bandits to quit Charenton and fall on their 
enemies. " When once you are engaged with the sworn," 
said he, "I shall suddenly fall upon their rear and not one 
will escape." The bandits agreed, and left the chateau, the 
gates of which were at once carefully closed. But, hardly 
were they in the field, without a place of retreat or a hope 
of escape, than they were surrounded. " "When they saw 
themselves betrayed," says the chronicler of Laon, " like wild 
beasts which a strong hand subdues, they lost their natural 
ferocity; they did not resist, but allowed themselves to be 
slaughtered like sheep." Ten thousand brigands perished in 
this butchery; in their camp was found a mass of crosses, 
gold and silver chalices, not to mention the jewels of in- 
estimable value worn by the five hundred women following 
.the camp (July, 1183). 

Twenty days later there was another execution in 



16 SOCIAL FRANCE 

Rouergue ; the famous bandit chieftain, Courbaran, was taken 
prisoner near Milhau, and hanged with five hundred of his 
followers. His head was carried to Puy. Another brigand, 
Raymond the Brown, captured by the brothers of peace at 
Chateauneuf-sur-Cher, had his throat cut. Brigandage be- 
came dangerous in a measure; at last one could breathe, live/ 
and move freely. 

Unfortunately, this great movement drew after it political 
and social consequences, which had not been foreseen. Pro- 
fessional robbers and assassins were not the only ones threat- 
ened by the new institution; all who disturbed the public 
peace, the nobles, ever ready to plunder the serf and hold him 
for ransom, were included in its proscription. Why let the,- 
habitual brigandage of feudalism go unpunished? How close; 
one's eyes to the intolerable abuse and exploitation of the 
people by their seigniors? Little by little this association,, 
in which the bourgeois element was dominant, took on the- 
character of an enterprise directed against seigniorial powers. 
This institution, arising at the initiative of an artisan, had a 
leveling tendency, because it assigned equal rights and powers 
to all members of the league, regardless of their rank. The 
fusion of townsmen and countrymen into one body with a 
common object became a double-edged weapon: some used 
it to destroy brigandage; others, quite naturally, thought of 
using it for the reform of society in favor of the lower 
classes. A revolution, a truly formidable menace to the privi- 
leged classes, was hatching. 

It was not given the time to materialize. As soon as the 
prelates and the nobles perceived the danger and realized 
that the brothers of peace would attack the established order 
of things, they faced about and a strong reaction began. In 
the chronicles of monks and clerics, these confederates, in 
whose honor God had performed miracles, and who were so 
piously enrolled under the banner of the Virgin, now sud- 
denly became disturbers of society, anarchists, and heretics, 
whose activity ought to be suppressed without delay. In 
1183, Robert, monk of Saint-Marien of Auxerre, wrote a 
laudatory resume of the exploits of the " hoods." In 1184, 
he considered them heretics, secta capuciatorum, and said: 
" As they insolently refused to obey the great, these have 



MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 17 

.^. xUied to suppress them. ' ' To the anonymous chronicler of 
' Laon their work was the result of a mad fury, insana rabies^ 
oapuciatorum: 

"Everywhere the seigniors trembled; they dared not exact from 
their vassals more than the legal services; the greater the exactions, 
he greater the danger; they were compelled to be content with the 
evenues which were due them. This fooHsh and midisciplined folk 
nad reached the height of madness; they dared to notify counts, 
viscounts, and princes that it behooved them to treat their subjects 
with more consideration, under pain of quickly experiencing the 
oieaning of their indignation." 

What an interest this proclamation of the brothers of 
peace would have had for history! But the church has not 
preserved it for us. 

The historian of the bishops of Auxerre goes even beyond 
his fellows. He calls the confreres ' ' abominable reprobates, ' ' 
and their attempt a ' ' horrible and dangerous presumption. ' ' 

" There was in Gaul a widespread enthusiasm which impelled 
people to revolt against the powerful. Though good at the outset, 
the movement was nothing else than the work of the devil, disguised 
as an angel of light. The league of the sworn of Puy was only a 
diabolic invention (diaholicum et perniciosum inventum). There was 
no longer fear or respect for superiors. All strove to acquire liberty, 
saying that it belonged to them from the time of Adam and Eve, 
from the very day of creation. They did not understand that serf- 
dom is the punishment of sin! The result was that there was no 
longer any distinction between the gTeat and the small, but a fatal 
confusion tending to ruin the institutions which rule us all, through 
the will of God and the agency of the powerful of this earth." 

But there is something still more serious: the monk of 
Auxerre attributes the enervation of religious discipline and 
the growth of heresy to the " hoods." Were they themselves 
not heretics of a kind, social and political heretics? 

" This formidable scourge (pestilentia formidabilis) began to 
spread in most parts of France, especially in Berry, Auxerre, and 
Burgundy. The adherents of the sect reached such a height of 
folly that they were ready to take by force the rights and liberties 
they claimed." 

Repression was not long in coming. The details about it 
we know only from what happened in the diocese of Auxerre.. 



18 SOCIAL FRANCE 

A bellicose noble, Hugh of Noyers (1183-1206), a firm enemy 
of heretics and a resolved adversary of all rival powers, 
had just become bishop. The " white hoods " were numerous 
in his territory, and even on his own domain. 

"With a multitude of soldiers he came to his episcopal town of 
Gy, which was infected with this pest, seized all the sworn he found 
there, inflicted pecuniary losses on them, and took away their hoods. 
Then, in order to give all possible publicity to their punishment, and 
to teach the serfs not to rise against their seigniors, he commanded 
that for a whole year they should go with heads uncovered to heat 
and cold and the inclemency of all seasons. In summer one could 
see these unfortunates bareheaded in the fields scorching in the sun, 
in winter shivering with cold. They would have passed the year 
thus, had not the uncle of the bishop, Gui, the archbishop of Sens, 
been moved to pity and obtained a remission of their penalty for 
them. By this means the bishop rid his possessions of this fanatical 
sect. The same was done in other dioceses, and thus, by the grace 
of God, it entirely disappeared." 

Such is the strange history of that popular movement, 
which ended by having those who set out to secure social 
order treated as its enemies. In their turn the hooded found 
themselves tracked like bandits by the clergy and the no- 
bility. It even seems that finally the powers let loose upon 
them the very brigands whose extermination they had sworn. 
The bands that had escaped the brotherhood again took the 
field. One of the most ferocious brigands, the Gascon, Louvart, 
in 1184 undertook to avenge the massacres of his followers. 
' ' He surprised an army of the hooded, ' ' says the chronicle of 
Xaon, " in a locality called Portes de Bertes, and destroyed 
it so completely that thereafter they dared show themselves no 
more." Later he took the town and the abbey of Aurillac 
by assault, and carried the chateau of Peyrat, in Limousin. 
Meanwhile Mercadier sacked Comborn, Pompadour, Saint- 
Pardoux, massacred all the inhabitants of the faubourg , 
Exideuil, and shared the benefits of his raids with the nobles 
of the land. This prowess he maintained for sixteen years. 

This great effort of the people, supported by order-loving 
men of all conditions, had turned against the people them- 
selves. Brigandage again flourished, the bandits were again 
the masters of the fields, and a considerable part of France 



MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 19 

relaxed into a reign of terror and desolation, which, for it, 
was the natural condition. 



In this atmosphere of misfortune and fright the most char- 
acteristic trait of the middle ages appeared: the belief in 
marvels, portents, and the frequent intervention of super- 
natural forces. Superstition under a thousand forms is 
always at the bottom of individual intelligence and is the 
common mark of all classes of men. In this respect the 
middle age directly carried on the ancient world, and the 
Christian of the time of Philip Augustus resembled the pagan 
of former times. Impregnated with the supernatural, haunted 
by childish fancies and by visions well known to weakened 
constitutions, he was convinced that everything was an omen, 
a forewarning of punishment from on high, a good or a bad 
sign of the wiU of Heaven. To him, natural scourges were 
only visitations of the power of God or the saints: he must 
submit or seek to avert these calamities by prayer. There 
lay the chief utility of the church, and the first cause of her 
influence. The prayers of clerics and monks were the most 
important public services and must suffer neither interrup- 
tion nor respite, for they were the safeguard of the entire 
people. 

All the superstitious practices of antiquity were transmitted 
to the feudal age. Vainly did the church combat this survival 
of paganism. Superstition, stronger than religion, molded 
the idea of Christianity to its own uses. The church herself 
could not prevent it. Monks who wrote history shared in the 
belief of their contemporaries. 

The prior of Vigeois, in Limousin, asserts that one could 
foresee the ills with which his land was afflicted through the 
whole year 1183: the wolves in the forest of Pompadour 
howled steadily throughout the day of the feast of Saint 
Austriclinian. The southern French, especially, had inherited 
from the Romans a belief in augury. In the midst of the 
Albigensian wars, Count Raymond VI of Toulouse refused 
to execute a convention because he had seen a bird, a crow, 
which the peasants call Saint Martin's bird, flying on his left. 
A robber-chief, Martin Algais, was vastly delighted at seeing 



20 SOCIAL FRANCE 

a white bird of prey pass from left to right, and, boasting 
mightily, said to the baron who hired him, '' By Saint John, 
Sire ! Whatever happens, we shall be victors. ' ' 

In 1211, a noble, Roger of Comminges, was going to do 
homage to Simon de Montfort. Just as the ceremony began 
the count sneezed. Immediately Roger, greatly troubled, took 
aside his escort and declared that he would not do homage, 
because the count had sneezed but once : everything done that 
day would turn out badly. But at last Roger yielded, at 
the instance of his companions, and from fear that Simon de 
Montfort would accuse him of heretical superstition. " All 
Gascons are very foolish," concludes the chronicler, Peter of 
Vaux-de-Cernay. But was this northern monk, whose writ- 
ings abound in miracles, less credulous than the Gascons ? 

Men believed in charms and sorcery. The council of Paris, 
under the presidency of Bishop Eudes of Sully, about 1200, 
expressly advised parish priests to keep baptismal fonts under 
lock and key, to prevent sorcery. Divination of the future 
by lot, also a legacy of antiquity, was in common use. A 
book, the Gospels, the Psalter, or the Bible, was opened and 
the first lines read contained a presage. Those who went to 
war, or on a crusade, did not fail to consult the lots on the 
outcome of their enterprise. Simon de Montfort, before tak- 
ing the cross, had opened a Psalter and sought to obtain a 
presentiment of his destiny. The church did not forbid the 
practice; she used it herself. On many an occasion, when a 
chapter confronted the question of instituting a bishop or a 
canon, the Gospel was consulted, and, from the verse found 
by chance, a prognostication (this is the sacred word, prog- 
nosticum) of the future of the recipient was made. 

Chance ! A word void of all meaning to people of the 
middle age! Everything is a manifestation of the divine 
will : this is the principle of the judicial duel and of ordeals ; 
it is a judgment of God. How could the church condemn 
a consultation of lots which made use of holy books? In the 
Chansons de la croisade des Albigeois, Pope Innocent III 
himself, before replying to the prelates who urged him to 
disinherit the count of Toulouse in favor of Simon de Mont- 
fort, demanded a moment of delay. " Barons," said he, 
* * take notice, if you please, that I consult. ' ' He opened a 



MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 21 

book and, perceiving from the lot that the destiny of the 
count of Toulouse was not evil, he attempted to plead his 
cause before the hostile assembly. 

Those whom the church decried were the sorcerers, 
sortilegi, the professional prophets, the exploiters of the un- 
suspecting, the deceivers, who now and then sought their 
prognostications even in the table of Pythagoras. The mid- 
dle age has left us some collections of verses, or very vague 
phrases, obscure prophecies which fortune-tellers use to this 
day. One of these documents, edited in Provengal, is in the 
form of a chart, from which hangs a i*ow of silken threads, 
corresponding to the series of verses or prophecies. The per- 
son who seeks to know his future touches any thread he 
chooses, and the corresponding verse informs him vaguely of 
his destiny. 

Astrologers' predictions had free play. They were often 
made public, the sinister ones in such a way that terrors 
caused by actually existing calamities were increased by imag- 
inary fears created by these prophets of evil. Toward the 
close of 1186, one of these prophecies, in the form of a letter 
from Jewish, Saracen, and Christian astrologers, was circu- 
lated over France and all of western Europe. This letter 
prophesied frightful cataclysms for the following September, 
at which time the planets were going to be in the constellation 
Libra. A hurricane, such as no one had ever seen, was going 
to raise all the dust and the sand from the earth's surface 
and engulf tovsms and villages. The only means of escape 
would be to take refuge in tunnels and caverns. Besides 
the cyclone, there would be earthquakes, plagues, floods, and 
wars among Christians. Finally, a conqueror would come 
who would institute most horrible butcheries. 

This lugubrious missive is mentioned or cited by a goodly 
number of chroniclers; all note its sad effects. *' Even the 
savants were thoroughly frightened, ' ' says the monk of Saint- 
Marien in Auxerre. ' ' As the fatal time approached, ' ' asserts 
an English chronicler, " clerics and laymen, rich and poor, 
fell into despair." The archbishop of Canterbury ordered a 
fast of three days. To check this panic and reassure the 
people it was necessary to put out a counter letter, written by 
a savant of Cordova to the archbishop of Toledo, in which 



22 SOCIAL FRANCE 

it was stated that the prediction had no foundation. Finally 
September arrived — and passed like all other months. What 
a relief! " We have escaped," cries the annalist of Anchin, 
" from the danger of a great hurricane. Praised be God! 
No one, except Him or His ministers, can reveal the future, 
■^e, — we do not believe that any chance astrologer or Toledan 
necromancer can foretell His will." 

Comets and eclipses were more than ever causes of fright. 
A certain Master Eudes, in a letter to the archbishop of 
Reims, predicted that all who should look upon the eclipse 
of the sun on May 1, 1184, would have their complexions 
changed' to the same color. The comet of July, 1198, an- 
nounced the death of Richard the Lion-Hearted. The lunar 
eclipse of 1204 brought a disastrous winter. The comet of 
1223 was only a harbinger of the death of Philip Augustus. 

The heavens were a theater of extraordinary phenomena. 
In 1182, the inhabitants of Limousin saw the moon change 
from black to red, and then resume its natural appearance. 
In 1185, a house of fire appeared several times in the air. In 
1192, some people of Perche saw an army of chevaliers 
descend from the sky, fight, and then disappear. A dragon 
occupied the horizon in 1204, on the very evening of the death 
of the archbishop of Reims, William of Champagne. In 1214, 
there was a ball of fire ; in 1222, an enormous star, a burning 
torch, conical in shape, which threatened to set the earth 
afire. 

No less did terrestrial marvels strike the imagination. At 
Rozoy-en-Brie, at the instant of the sacrifice of the mass, the 
wine was actually changed to blood, the bread to flesh : visible 
transubstantiation ! In a church of Limousin, several 
crosses appeared on the altar-cloth. " This miracle," says 
the prior of Vigeois, " was confirmed by a viscountess, an 
abbot, and by all the people ; only, one could not well deter- 
mine the color of the crosses. God alone knows what He 
wished to signify thereby." In a church of Tarn the blood 
circulated in a statue of the virgin. At Chateauroux, during 
the war between Philip Augustus and Henry II, a brigand, 
who was throwing dice before a church door, in a fit of rage 
hurled a stone at a statue of the Virgin holding the Child 
Jesus. The arm of the Child was broken off, and a great deal 



MATEEIAL AND SPIEITUAL CONDITION 23 

of blood flowed from the wound. The precious blood, capable 
c(f effecting marvelous cures, was kept; and John Lackland 
took the arm and never parted with it. 

The chronicle of Eigord alone cites three or four instances 
of resurrections. Geoffrey of Vigeois knew a dame of Limoges 
who had the fortune after death to interest Mary Magdalene. 
The saint touched her lips and the body regained life. A king, 
anointed and consecrated as was Philip Augustus, could not 
fail to be an object of divine protection. Three times at 
least, in his wars against feudal lords and the Plantagenets, 
he was miraculously carried out of harm's way. No one 
doubted that the souls of the dead returned to torment the 
living. The son of Hugh of Marche, in 1185, killed a knight 
named Bertrand, and the ghost of this Bertrand did not 
cease to rise before the face of the murderer until the victim's 
family had obtained satisfaction. 

The intervention of the devil is nearly as frequent as that 
of the saints. Not content with terrifying people, he some- 
times took possession of their bodies. William of Armorica 
bears witness that a knight of Brittany was suddenly, while 
at table, entered by the devil, who spoke through his mouth. 
A priest was called, and the devil cried out because the priest 
brought with him a book of exorcisms ; but it took some days 
to make him abandon his victim. Another time a demon took 
it into his head to assume the figure, arms, and steed of a 
departed noble. In the field he appeared to one of the friends 
of the deceased and commanded him to mount behind him 
on the steed. After covering two hundred paces or so, they 
suddenly found themselves confronted by a large troop of 
chevaliers, who upbraided the ghost for his tardiness. ' ' Come 
along, ' ' said he, and set off with these spirits, whereupon his 
friend, frightened, fell off the horse and remained uncon- 
scious on the ground for a long time, ' ' I saw him this morn- 
ing," says the historian of Philip Augustus, " just as he was 
telling the facts to the archbishop; he showed us the place 
where this strange episode occurred." To keep at a distance 
these diabolic apparitions and mischievous spirits, no one 
ever slept without a light. A night-lamp was always lighted 
above the bed. 

The innumerable miracles performed at saints' tombs, by; 



24 SOCIAL FRANCE 

seeing or touching relies, will be considered later. But there 
were also living saints whose marvelous doings the contem- 
poraries of Philip Augustus attest. Alpais, a cowherd of 
Cudot, in the vicinity of Sens, ate nothing for ten years. 
She lived, constantly lying down, her body wonderful in its 
thinness, and her figure of angelic beauty. When there were 
great religious solenmities, she was seized with ecstasy and, 
led by an angel, walked in heavenly places. After several 
days she came to herself, feeling that she was reentering 
darkness. She saw what was far away and predicted the 
future. The chronicler of Saint-Marien of Auxerre adds that 
he has spoken with her several times, and has come away 
stupefied at the knowledge and speech of this girl, brought up 
in the country. The anonymous chronicler of Laon mentions 
another person, Mathilda, through whom divine power worked 
in the same way. 

Among the wonder-workers most celebrated in this epoch, 
two men have played an historic role : they are the two preach- 
ers of crusades — Eustache, abbot of Saint-Germer-de-Flai, and 
Fulc, cure of Neuilly. 

The abbot of Saint-Germer had revealed a vision to the 
Plantagenet King Henry II, in which the premature death 
of his two eldest sons was predicted. Charged with preach- 
ing the fourth crusade in England, he, like Saint Bernard, 
scattered miracles along his path. For him to bless a fountain 
was enough to make it restore sight to the blind, speech to 
the dumb, strength and health to the weak. Reaching a vil- 
lage wMch wanted water, he gathered the people in the 
church, and in their presence struck a stone with a staff and, 
lo! water flowed forth, healing aU maladies. At London he 
undertook to reform manners, he forbade trade on Sunday, 
and tried to compel the citizens to be charitable. This was 
very difficult. The English clergy, jealous of his success, 
considered him a nuisance and forced him to go back to 
France, crying after him, " Why dost thou come to reap the 
harvest of others? " 

Fulc of Neuilly, the great agitator, had the gift of persua- 
sion, the irresistible eloquence which swept thousands into 
the holy war; this converter of sinful men and women was, 
in addition, an envoy of Heaven, and he proved his mission 



MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 25 

by miracles. French and English chroniclers try to outdo 
each other in telling how he healed the blind, the deaf, the 
dumb, and the palsied by prayers and by a mere laying-on 
of hands. But not all believe these marvelous stories, for 
Rigord declines to go into details, complaining of the unbe- 
lief of men. The Englishman, Roger of Hoveden, is less 
reserved. He pictures the saint at Lisieux rebuking the 
clergy of the place for irregular living. Furious, the clerics 
seize him, throw him into prison, and put his feet into irons. 
But, by the grace of God, Fulc frees himself and preaches 
at Caen, where he astonishes the crowd by his miracles. The 
keepers of the castle at Caen, thinking it will please their 
master, imprison him, and also throw him into chains. Again 
he issues from his dungeon, and pursues his roving life. This 
extraordinary man persuaded women of ill-fame to become 
respectable mothers, and induced usurers and confirmed de- 
bauchees to give all their goods to the poor. " These mira- 
cles, ' ' says an English chronicler, ' ' were no less astonishing. ' ' 



In this human society, excited by daily sufferings and 
terrors, and living in the midst of hallucinations and visions, 
everything happened, even the improbable. Some historians 
have questioned the truth of one of the most unbelievable 
occurrences of this epoch, the children's crusade of 1212. 
They have seen in it only the stuff of which a popular legend 
is made. Nevertheless, research has shown that this strange 
episode is historical. The movement spread from France to 
Germany like a contagion ; German children, like French chil- 
dren, made their crusade at the same time and under the 
same influence. The agreement of the chroniclers of both 
countries is so striking that one must accept it as a fact. 

In June, 1212, a shepherd of Cloyes, near Vendome, a 
young boy named Stephen, had a vision like the carpenter 
of Puy. God, in the form of a poor pilgrim, asked him for 
a piece of bread and gave him a letter, charging him to go 
and reconquer the Holy Land and deliver the Holy Sepulcher, 
A little later, when the shepherd was driving his sheep from 
a cultivated field, to his astonishment, he saw them kneel 
before him and beg for mercy. Then it was indeed a divine 



26 SOCIAL FRANCE 

mission. He traveled over the land, uttering the cry of the 
crusades : ' ' Lord God, arouse Christianity ! Lord God, give 
us the true cross ! " As he worked miracles everywhere, other 
shepherds joined him, and soon a crowd of children, aged 
twelve or thirteen years at most, chose him as leader of the 
crusade. The chronicle of Rouen would have us believe that 
be had nearly thirty thousand under his orders, forming an 
immense procession with crosses and banners. Other chil- 
dren, inspired like Stephen (just as in the fifteenth century- 
several Joans of Arc appeared), are said to have raised simi- 
lar bands in various parts of France and then to have joined 
the command of the shepherd of Cloyes. According to a 
monk of Saint-Medard, in Soissons, some miracles announced 
this new type of crusade. Countless numbers of fish, frogs, 
butterflies, and birds were seen emigrating from the seaside. 
Likewise, a multitude of dogs assembled near a certain chateau 
of Champagne, separated into two camps, and fought a furi- 
ous battle, which very few survived. Coming events cast 
their shadows before them. 

How could this army of children form and organize in 
the face of the opposition of parents and local clergy? To 
those who asked them where they were going, the children 
responded, " To God." The masses favored them. They be- 
lieved in the miracles of Stephen, and were convinced that 
God verily manifested His will through these innocent souls, 
and that their purity would redeem the sins of men. "Wher- 
ever they passed, the inhabitants of towns and villages, far 
from stopping them, gave them supplies and money. Every 
one struggled to see the leader of the shepherds, the agent 
of God ; and sought a hair of his head or a bit of his clothing 
as a relic. 

Finally the state became aroused. Philip Augustus, after 
having sought the opinion of the prelates and masters of the 
university of Paris on the matter, commanded the children 
to return home. A part of them obeyed ; the greater number 
did" not. Even the papacy dared not heartily disapprove of 
the enterprise. Innocent III, so attached was he to his desire 
for a crusade, contented himself, it seems, with saying, 
" These children shame us; while we sleep, they cheerfully 
go forth to deliver the Holy Sepulcher." 



MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 27 

The church was, to a great extent, responsible for this 
affair. To induce the French to take the cross, Rome each 
year sent preachers who, on crossroads, in public places, and 
in churches, never ceased urging the Christians to leave their 
homes and set out for Jerusalem. During the pontificate of \ 
Innocent III, the ardor and intensity of this propaganda 
fired the imagination to an inconceivable degree. Women 
and children, particularly, were aroused. The chronicler, 
Albert of Stade, reports that at Liege some hundreds of 
women, driven by religious enthusiasm, writhed in ecstatic 
convulsions. "Without doubt, the same nervous contagion con- 
tributed in France to the formation of the army led by the 
shepherd of Cloyes. 

This army did not continue to consist solely of children. 
Priests, merchants, peasants, and even some adventurers, bad 
characters who had nothing to lose and who formed the usual 
following of crusades, joined it. Passing town after town, 
these soldiers of Christ, whose number ever increased, at last 
approached Marseilles, which had been selected as the port of 
embarkation. In the lead came the wondrous child, Stephen, 
borne on a richly ornamented vehicle, surrounded by a body- 
guard; behind him marched a multitude of pilgrims of both 
sexes. 

The children made an arrangement with two Marseilles 
ship-owners, Hugh Ferri and William of Porqueres, who said 
they were willing to transport the young crusaders to Syria 
* ' for the glory of God. ' ' They secured seven vessels, in fact, 
and packed the children on them. Two of the vessels ran 
aground near Sardinia, on the island of San Pietro, and were 
lost with their passengers. The others were taken to Bougie, 
then to Alexandria, by the ship-owners, who had evolved the 
plan of selling the children in the slave markets. Thus several 
thousand of the children found themselves transported to the 
court of the caliph, and among them four hundred clerics. 
' ' They were treated very kindly, ' ' says the chronicler Aubri 
of Trois-Fontaines, " because the caliph, under the guise of 
a cleric, had studied at Paris." Oriental sovereigns already/ 
sent their children to the university. 

It is a satisfaction to know that the two wretches responsi- 
ble for the outcome of this child's crusade, did not go un- 



28 SOCIAL FRANCE 

punished. ' In the war which the German Emperor, Frederick 
II, conducted seventeen years later against the Saracens of 
Sicily, the two men attempted another crime. They conspired 
to sell the emperor to the chief Sicilian emir, but, instead, 
the emir was captured by the Germans and hanged. His 
accomplices perished on the same gallows. When, in 1229, 
Frederick II concluded a treaty with the Sultan Al-Kamil 
he stipulated that a certain number of the unfortunate cru- 
saders of 1212 be freed. One of them reported that not all 
of his companions in misfortune were released ; seven hundred 

still remained in the service of the governor of Alexandria. 

V * 



The true religion of the middle age, to be frank, is the 
worship of relics. How could men of that time raise them- 
selves to the metaphysical and moral conceptions of Christian 
doctrine ? To the masses religion was the veneration of the 
remains of saints or of objects which had been used by Jesus 
or the Virgin. It was believed that divine intervention in 
human affairs manifested itself especially through the power 
of relics. Therefore, hardly anything was done, whether in 
public or private life, without having recourse to the pro- 
tection or the guarantee of these sacred objects. 

Relics were brought to councils and assemblies; on them 
the most solemn oaths were taken, treaties between entire 
peoples and conventions between individuals, were sworn. 
They were the shield and buckler of cities. Was there need 
of asking God to end a long-enduring rain ? A procession 
was held and the relics were shown. Whoever undertook a 
distant pilgrimage, a dangerous voyage, or a campaign of 
war, first went to pray to a saint, to see and touch a relic. 
The chevalier put some relics in the hilt of his sword; the 
tradesman, in a little sack suspended from his neck. 

One of the most frequent penances enjoined by the church, 
and one of the surest means of safety, the great fountain of spir- 
itual benefits, was a pilgrimage to the tomb of some saint. The 
more remote and difficult of access the shrine, the greater was 
the merit of the pilgrim. These saints and relics, moreover, 
were graded like earthly powers. Happy those who could 
' venerate the bones of an apostle, one of those privileged be- 



MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 29 

ings who were in touch with Christ ; happy, above all others, 
those who could visit Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulcher! 
But it was not necessary to leave one 's country ; the Christian 
found right in France well-known sanctuaries to which the 
believers flocked: Sainte-Genevieve at Paris; Saint-Denis; 
Saint-Martin at Tours; Mont Saint-Michel; Notre-Dame at 
Chartres; Notre-Dame at Vezelay; Saint-Martial at Limoges; 
Notre-Dame at Puy; Rocamadour; Saint-Foi at Conques; 
Saint-Sernin at Toulouse. Here the sinner put himself at 
peace with God and gained a quiet conscience ; the sick found 
a cure, for saints heal more surely than medicines. The 
physicus, be he Christian or Jew, was very expensive, and 
was only an ignorant empiricist. The medical journals of 
the time were collections of miracles, lihri miraculorum, writ- 
ten in the centers of pilgrimage. 

The marvelous powers of relics are not only noted in writ- 
ings of a special character, but they also form a considerable 
part of the woof of chronicles. The monks who wrote them 
were interested in advertising the efficacy of the relics from 
which their abbey drew its prosperity. At Saint-Denis, 
Rigord either omits or states in a few lines historical facts 
of the highest importance, but he writes two large pages about 
the procession of 1191. Philip Augustus, the king of France, 
was then on a crusade; his only heir. Prince Louis, fell ill 
of dysentery, which gave cause for serious alarm. The monks 
of Saint-Denis were brought to Paris, carrying the sacred 
relics : the qrown of thorns, a nail from the cross, and an arm 
of Saint Simeon. The procession reached the church of Saint- 
Lazare ; there it was met by another gigantic procession, com- 
prising all the regular and secular clergy of Paris, with the 
bishop, Maurice of Sully, in the lead, and an enormous crowd 
of students and citizens. The procession moved to the palace 
in the Cite, where the sick child lay. A cross was traced 
on his abdomen with the relics, and all danger of death 
disappeared. Some months later it was a question of obtain- 
ing from Heaven the deliverance of the Holy Land, and the 
happy return of the king to his country. This time they were 
content with placing the bodies of the sainted martyrs — Denis, 
Rusticus, and Eleutherius — in view on the altar of the great 
abbey church. The members of the governing regency, the 



30 SOCIAL FRANCE 

queen-mother, Adele of Champagne, the archbishop of 
Reims, and many of the faithful were guests at this expo- 
sition. 

All churches sought to procure some relics; this was a 
vital matter, and the first care of their founders was to col- 
lect some of these precious objects. We possess a sort of 
journal of the acquisitions of relics made by the priory of 
Tavaux between the years 1180 and 1213. There is no more 
curious document. 

In 1181, the abbot of Couronne, the head of the mother- 
house, gave the priory some relies of Saint Peter, Saint 
Lawrence, Saint Vincent, and Saint Genesius. In the next 
year a friend of the prior told him of an abandoned chapel, 
where there was a very old reliquary full of anonymous relics ; 
they were taken to the priory. The same year a priest pre- 
sented the monks of Tavaux with a piece of the garment of 
the martyr, Saint Thomas, a fragment of the Holy Sepulcher, 
and one of the stones with which Saint Stephen was stoned. 
A little later were acquired the relics of Saint Martial, Saint 
Grregory, Saint Hilary, Saint Germain of Auxerre, Saint 
Ausonne, Saint Eustache, Saint Fereol, Saint Front, 
Saint Vedast, and some hair of Saint Peter. A steward sent 
some relics of Saint Basil and Saint Flavian. The founder 
of the church, Aimeri Brun, who had made a pilgrimage to 
Jerusalem, made a gift of a flask of oil which had flowed from 
a statue of the Virgin. The prior, likewise, began a quest; 
from the famous sanctuary of Saint-Yrieix he brought two 
teeth of the Prophet Amos, some relics of Saint Martin and 
Saint Leonard ; and, by another series of acquisitions, several 
relics of the Theban Legion, of Saint Priscus, and some bone- 
lets, hair, and bits of the cloak of Saint Bernard; and, last 
of all, a bit of wood from the true cross. But no one could 
equal the cellarer of the priory, Gerard, as a relic-hunter and 
collector. It is to him that the monks of Tavaux owe the 
relics of Saint Peter, Saint John the Evangelist, Saint 
Satumin, Saint Sebastian, Saint Eustelle, and of the Patri- 
archs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Thanks also to him, the 
abbey of Saint-Yrieix sent relics of Saint Peter, Saint Paul, 
of Saint Sixtus, Saint Lawrence, Saint Nicolas, and Saint 
Leonard. From the monastery of Hautmont came relics of 



MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 31 

Saint Benignus, Saint Caesar, Saint Amand, and of the Holy 
Innocents. 

Such are the relics of known origin; but the journal of 
Tavaux mentions a good many others, of the highest interest 
to the faithful: bits of the Virgin's cloak, hair of Saint 
Stephen, a fragment of the manger of Bethlehem, a part of 
the Virgin's shoe, a small portion of the incense which the 
Magi carried to Bethlehem, hair of Saint Paul, a fragment 
of Saint Andrew's cross and of the stone on which Christ 
stood when he ascended into heaven, a finger of John the 
Baptist, a tooth of Saint Maurice, a rib of Saint Andrew, a 
piece of Mary Magdalene's hair-cloth, a scrap of the jaw- 
bone of Sainte Radegonda, etc. 

One must consider that all these objects were acquired 
within a very few years, and by a church of a Poitevin priory 
which had no especial reputation. 

Contemporaries accepted them with admirable assurance; 
they were not critical as to their origin, and asked no ques- 
tions as to their authenticity. No one wondered at the 
prodigious mass of relics scattered in a thousand different 
places, nor at the impossibility of explaining the existence 
in several sanctuaries of a unique object, for every one had 
faith. It was only in the higher places of the church that, 
there was any disquiet at the excessive developments which this 
material form of religious sentiment was taking. Innocent III 
attempted to limit it by recommending to the French clergy 
that they accept only objects of indisputable authenticity. 

The doubts and prudent precautions of the leaders of the 
church were ill-received by the masses, and those prelates who 
ever dared to express their skepticism ran great risks. They 
were regarded as evil characters and as enemies of religion. 

At the end of the reign of Louis VII, in 1162, a sudden 
rumor spread among the citizens of Paris that the head of 
Sainte Genevieve had disappeared ; that it was, without doubt, 
stolen; it was no longer in its reliquary. Great excitement! 
Louis VII was enraged (immensa furoris ira exacerhatur) , 
and swore by the Saint of Bethlehem that, if the relic were 
not found, he would have all the canons of Sainte-Genevieve 
whipped and expelled. He sent soldiers to the abbey to guard 
the treasure and other relics, and commanded the archbishop 



32 SOCIAL FRANCE 

of Sens and his suffragans to proceed with an investigation. 
The canons were in distress, and above all the prior, William, 
who, as guardian of the shrine and the treasure of the church, 
felt himself directly questioned. 

On the day fixed for the investigation the king and his 
court, the bishops, abbots, and a crowd of curious persons 
fill the church of Sainte-G-enevieve. The archbishop of Sens 
and his suffragans have been officially designated to be present 
at the uncovering of the body of the saint. The box is 
opened, and — the head and other relics are found intact. See- 
ing this, Prior William cannot contain his joy, and with a 
loud voice intones a Te Deum, which fills the church and 
which the people chant with him. This incident had not 
been foreseen in planning the ceremony. Indignant, Manasses 
II of Garlande, bishop of Orleans, cries out: " Who is the 
intriguer who dares chant the Te Deum without the authoriza- 
tion of the archbishop and the prelates? And why this 
explosion of joy? Because the head of some old woman, 
(vetulae cujusdam), which the monks have surreptitiously 
placed in the shrine, has just been found! " 

The accusation was grave, and William replied with heat: 
" If thou knowest not who I am, do not begin by slandering 
me. I am not an intriguer, but a servant of Sainte Genevieve. 
The head thou sawest is, without doubt, that of an old woman ; 
but it is well known that Sainte Genevieve lived a pure and 
immaculate virgin to the age of seventy years or more. There 
is no need for doubt to enter any mind; let a pyre be pre- 
pared, and I, with the head of the saint in my hands, will 
pass through the fire without fear." 

Sneeringly, the bishop responded, ' * For that head I would 
not put my hand in a cup of hot water, and you, you would 
enter a furnace ! ' ' 

Finally the archbishop of Sens saw fit to intervene. He 
ordered the bishop to keep silent, and openly praised the zeal 
of William in defending the sainted virgin. " As for the 
slandering bishop," adds the author of the life of Saint Wil- 
liam, by way of moral, ' ' his crime did not remain unpunished. 
Some years after, beset with accusations of all sorts, he was 
driven from his episcopal see, and finished his miserable life 
by a death which was no better. ' ' 



MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 33 

Here the historian, in his desire to make known to all the 
chastisement of a despiser of relics, has taken great liberty 
with history. The truth is that the bishop of Orleans, the 
skeptic, was never deprived of his functions; he remained a 
bishop more than twenty years after the incident of Sainte 
Genevieve, and died peacefully in his bed. 

To meet attacks and to keep the faith of believers alive, 
" expositions " or even " revelations " of relies were insti- 
tuted. The presence of the sacred- remains in the shrines was 
verified, a procedure which always reassured consciences ; and 
searches were conducted under altars and in tombs for new 
objects of veneration. In either case the religious solemnity 
demanded the assembling of all authorities of the land, and 
drew a large concourse of people. The church gained by it 
in every way. 

It was imperative to guard these precious objects with the 
greatest care. The owners of relics had to fear warriors, like 
the seignior of Limousin, who, in 1182, stole the body of Saint 
Ancildus from Saint-Martial and concealed it in the chapel 
of his chateau, ad tutelam castri; and also robbers like those 
who in 1219 removed the remains of Saint Leoeadia from the 
priory of Vic-sur-Aisne at night. The people could not do 
without the saint; they found her again at the bottom of the 
Aisne. 

It was also necessary to contend against competitors; for 
often several churches claimed to possess the same relic. The 
inconvenience was slight when the rival establishments were 
remote from one another; but two well-known and neighbor- 
ing churches could not long remain in competition without 
scandal. In 1186, there were exposed in Saint-Etienne, at 
Paris, thirty-two hairs of the Virgin, an arm of Saint Andrew, 
and the head of Saint Denis, But this head already existed 
in the celebrated abbey where the kings of France are buried. 
The monks of Saint Denis protested; in 1191, the silver box 
containing the whole body of Saint Denis was opened in the 
presence of representatives of the Capetian government. 
They made it a point to put the head apart in a special 
shrine, which was open for a whole year to the gaze of pil- 
grims. 

This incident was the more disagreeable to them because 



34 SOCIAL FRANCE 

they had already had considerable difficulty in combating a 
sentiment hostile to their relic. From the time of Louis the 
Pious they had claimed that the Saint Denis, whose body they 
possessed, was Denis the Areopagite, that celebrated bishop 
of Corinth converted by Saint Paul. They would not admit 
that their saint was a Gallo-Roman bishop, an obscure martyr 
of later date, who had been put to death with Rusticus and 
Eleutherius by the pagans of Montmartre. They considered 
as enemies those skeptics who dared maintain that their Saint 
Denis could not be the Areopagite, because, according to 
certain documents, he had never left Greece, but had died and 
been buried there. 

For five centuries this question had consumed floods of ink 
and had raised bitter discussions. Abelard was driven from 
Saint-Denis, where he had found refuge after his misfortune, 
for having indiscreetly disturbed the traditional conviction 
of the monks. The controversy, always bitter, still continued 
in the time of Philip Augustus. The doubts lived on and 
increased; and the chief of royal abbeys truly suffered from 
them. 

Pope Innocent III, in 1216, found the remedy. One of 
his legates, Peter of Capua, had had the good fortune to 
discover in Greece a tomb which, it appeared, was unques- 
tionably that of Denis the Areopagite, and had carried the 
body to Rome. Innocent III made a present of it to the 
prior of Saint Denis, who had just attended the Lateran 
Council, and he accompanied this gift with a letter dated 
January 4, 1216, a document worth reading. To send the 
monks the body of Saint Denis, the Areopagite, of a properly 
certified origin, was equal to saying that they did not already' 
possess it. In order not to appear to take a part against a 
tradition dear to the great French abbey, the pope adopted 
a neutral position, stated that there was a difference of opin- 
ion, epitomized the history of the contention, and added, 
" Wishing to hurt neither the one nor the other of the con- 
victions before us, we present to your monastery ", he 

did not say " the body " of Saint Denis, for that would have 
touched the point at issue, but he ingeniously employed a 
very vague word, pignus, that is a token, a souvenir, sacrum 
heati Dionysii pignus. " In that way," said he, '* since you 



MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION 35 

will have both bodies, no one can doubt that, between the two, 
you have that of the Areopagite." 

To problems of this kind the church could find other solu- 
tions. For a long time the monks of the abbey of Saint- 
Pierre-le-Vif, at Sens, and those of the abbey of Jouarre, 
were at rivalry over the possession of the body of Saint 
Potentin. In 1218, an unusually solemn exposition of the 
relics of Saint-Pierre-le-Vif was arranged; on the very day, 
by a providential chance, the bishops gathered at Sens found 
in the tomb of the saint written proof that the remains offered 
to the veneration of the faithful were, indeed, those of Saint 
Potentin. 

A similar difference in Auvergne toward the end of the 
twelfth century started a quarrel between the monks of Mozac 
and those of Issoire, From time immemorial the Christians 
of Auvergne and elsewhere had been satisfied that the body 
of Saint Austremoine, the apostle of Auvergne, reposed at 
Mozac. It was considered well established that, in 764, Pepin 
the Short had presided at a Council of Volvic, and that the 
remains of the saint had then solemnly been transported to 
Mozac, from which place they had never been removed. But, 
at the beginning of the reign of Philip Augustus, a rumor 
spread in the district that the head of the saint was in the 
church at Issoire. A legend arose, according to which a 
seignior of Aquitaiue, named Roger, who was present at the 
ceremony of translation in 764, had surreptitiously detached 
the' head of Saint Austremoine and placed it in his chateau, 
Pierre-Incise. Thence it was said to have passed to the monks 
of Charroux, the celebrated Poitevin abbey, and finally to 
have found a resting-place at Issoire. The middle age has 
left us a whole literature of pseudo-historical writings, made 
of whole cloth, to explain the peregrinations of some relic 
or other and favor the claims of a given church. In the eyes 
of our fathers it was a pious act, in no wise reprehensible, to 
put the interests of some saint or monastery ahead of the 
truth. The motive was considered, and a forger was excused 
for his devotion. 

The legend spread by the monks of Issoire had a disastrous 
effect on Mozac ; the latter sanctuary threatened to be aban- 
doned for the rival establishment. In 1197, the abbot of 



36 SOCIAL FRANCE 

Mozae asked the bishop of Clermont to come and institute a 
verification of the relies of Saint Austremoine in the legal 
way. The chest which held them was opened and the com- 
plete body was found, tightly wound in linen and silk, " in 
the same condition," says the record, " in which King Pepin 
had left it." The bands still bore the imprint of the royal 
seal. Doubt was no longer possible ; the victory remained with 
Mozac. 

To-day these matters appear to us to be of small moment 
in the history of France; then they were of vital interest. 
For medieval society there were no more important events 
than an exposition or translation of relics, a miracle per- 
formed at the tomb of an apostle or saint, a dispute over 
the possession of a sacred body. When, in 1204, the French 
and Venetians had taken Constantinople, the whole of France, 
stirred to its depths, uttered a great cry of joy. "Was it at 
the thought that a Latin Empire would replace the Greek, 
or that our feudalism would establish a second France on 
the shores of the Bosphorus and the --^gean Sea? By no 
means. The cause of this boundless delight was that knights 
and pilgrims would return with their share of a particular 
booty, the fruit of a systematic pillage of Byzantine churches ; 
that in all provinces there would be an enormous distribution 
of Oriental relics. The fourth crusade brought a sudden, 
unexpected, and unheard-of increase of Christian riches. 
There is the fact which mightily interested the masses; and 
it is precisely that which our general histories fail to mention. 



CHAPTER 11 
PARISHES AND PRIESTS 

The preceding pages have shown that religious sentiments 
and religious fears were in the time of Philip Augustus still 
the most effective motives of individual and collective acts, 
the most powerful of all human levers. This lever was in \ 
the hands of the clergy. 

Despite the violent attacks which were beginning to be 
leveled against her, the church steadily retained her exalted 
place in the respect of men. It was because she fulfilled, and 
alone could fulfil, the greater part of the social functions 
which have to-day devolved upon the state. Historians, like 
Henri Martin, who do not admit the legitimacy and necessity 
of this role of the church, have not at all grasped the middle 
age. Doubtless the essential function of the clergy was to 
pray and perform religious offices for the entire nation. But 
it W£is also the teaching staff; it preserved scientific and lit- 
erary knowledge. It was charged with the care of the poor, 
the sick, and the pilgrims. It decided a great part of all 
civil and criminal cases. Armed with excommunication and 
interdict, it contributed to policing. It presided over all civil 
acts of the faithful. For feudal sovereigns it was the indis- 
pensable instrument of rule and administration. Finally, al- 
most alone, it formed the classes which practised the liberal 
professions — doctors, teachers, judges, and lawyers. All the 
intellectual and moral interests of society, and an important 
part of its material affairs, were intrusted to it. In short, 
this international corporation of churchmen did not stop 
with directing the common destiny of Christendom; it 
was, in addition, the mainspring of all national organiza- 
tions. 

Landed proprietor, master of a considerable amount of 
territory; capitalist, unable to alienate property, but, despite 

37 



38 SOCIAL FEANCE 

all canonical prohibitions, engaged in every kind of busi- 
ness, even that of money-lending; privileged in every way, 
evading the direct tax and often also the indirect; exempt 
from military service, judged by special tribunals, the clergy 
of this epoch had an incomparable position. Nothing in the 
France of to-day can give an idea of it. 

But one must remember that the clerics of the middle ages 
were like their times. Their traditions and professional rules 
did not protect them sufficiently from violent habits and gross 
manners, the atmosphere which they breathed with all their 
contemporaries. In striving to better and pacify feudalism, 
they did not escape the influence of the dominant regime, and, 
in spite of themselves, yielded to the contagion of example. 
Any number of the tonsured, coming as they did from the 
military class and leading a noble's life, shared the senti- 
ments, the prejudices, and the vices of their kind. Under 
the cassock and the frock there were the same vivacity of 
behavior, the same exuberant passions, the same taste for 
battle. Failing to expend their energy and their need of 
exercise in wars, they compensated themselves by revolts, con- 
flicts as to rights and duties, and rude competition between 
temporal and religious interests. In churches and cloisters 
there fermented the feelings of independence and rebellion, 
which are characteristic of feudal temperaments. Flesh and 
blood retained their dominion over this kind of priests. A 
rough and militant church was she, justifying her immense 
power by the services she rendered to the people, and having 
a virtue and an intelligence vastly superior to that of other 
classes; she had not the submissive, servile, and pliable ap- 
pearance of the modern priesthood. She lived, she moved, 
and she fought like every other body of society. 



At the base of ecclesiastical society was the parish, served 
by a cure; that is, by a guardian of souls, qui Jiabet curam 
animarum. The greater number of cures belonged to the 
secular church and depended entirely on the bishop. But, 
when the parish was the property of an abbey or a chapter, 
it could be intrusted to a canon regular or even to a monk 



PARISHES AND PRIESTS 39 

endowed with the priesthood and delegated to this service by 
his establishment. The combination of several parishes and 
their dependencies, the village altars served by chaplains, 
formed a group called a deanery or archpresbytery, depend- 
ing on the region. The dean or archpriest, the natural inter- 
mediary between bishop or archdeacon and the cures of single 
parishes, exercised the right of jurisdiction and correction 
over the latter. Such was the lower clergy, in direct contact 
with the peasant, itself drawn largely from the populace, the 
most numerous, but at the same time the most irregular and 
least manageable element in the church. 

The history of these rural priests is obscure. Parishes of 
those times left no archives. Records of episcopal visits do 
not exist for the epoch of Philip Augustus. As for the 
chroniclers, they tell only of ecclesiastical magnates, of bish- 
ops, chapters, and abbeys which rank among the seigniories. 
The sources are especially devoid of information respecting 
material and external conditions. Illuminators of manu- 
scripts and sculptors pictured bishops, abbots, and monks; 
they did not dream of presenting cures. The seals of parishes 
and deaneries with which these priests validated the civil acts 
of their parishioners — such as gifts, sales, and testaments — 
are, unhappily, small in size and bear hardly anything else 
than symbolic objects: the Agnus Dei, the fleur de lys, the 
eagle of St. John, the chalice used at the mass. It is unusual 
if one of them, like that used by Renaud, archpriest of 
Bourges in 1209, shows a priest officiating before an altar 
upon which is seen a pyx. The museum of Bayeux contains 
a small bell of the time of Philip Augustus ; it bears its date, 
1202, something very unusual. It is true that some of the 
parochial churches where these cures officiated are still in 
existence. But how few can be dated with certainty ! Some 
of them rival the sanctuaries of celebrated cathedrals or 
abbeys in wealth and elegance; such are those two beautiful 
specimens of gothie art — Saint-Pierre of Gonesse and the 
church of Petit- Andely. 

In other parts of France, in the central and southern prov- 
inces, the parochial clergy strove less to be luxuriously in- 
stalled than to be prepared to resist nobles, warriors, 
bandits, and pirates. Therefore, the cures constructed massive 



40 SOCIAL FRANCE 

churches, provided with heavy pillars, with high walls, and 
with belfries like donjons. There they could give asylum to 
the peasants round about. Still it was to be feared that the 
cure would use them to tyrannize over his parishioners and 
to resist his bishop. The council of Avignon, in 1209, speaks 
of the abominations which occur in certain fortified churches 
" where unworthy priests transformed the house of the 
Lord into a den of thieves." It forbade the fortifica- 
tion of churches and cemeteries; bishops were to destroy 
everything which gave a sanctuary the appearance of a 
chateau. 

The parish priests found another means of guarding against 
the dangers of isolation and of securing themselves against 
the exactions and violence of the barons. They formed broth- 
erhoods among themselves, or even with laymen, veritable 
mutual assurance societies with rules, which they swore to 
observe, and with penalties pronounced against those who 
should violate them. But the church, hostile to the com- 
munes and the corporations of the bourgeoisie, had her rea- 
sons for mistrusting these brotherhoods, even though they 
consisted of churchmen. The council of Rouen in 1189 con- 
demned them. " Canonical regulations detest this kind of 
association, canonica detestatur scriptura/' say the bishops. 
And the ground they give is singular: " This is because it 
is difficult to observe the rules of the brotherhood, and be- 
cause" they are the cause of perjury for some." The truth 
is that the episcopacy would not tolerate an instrument of 
independence in the hands of the lower clergy. The brother- 
hoods of priests disappeared. Still it seems that the associa- 
tion of priests of Crepy-en-Val6is {confraria presbiterorwm 
de Crespeio), organized under Philip Augustus, did not alarm 
the authorities, for it endured throughout the middle age, and, 
contrary to the rule, the documents of its history have come 
down to us.^ 

Still the fears of the bishops were well-founded. If they 
wished to keep the personnel of the parishes under that direct 
authority which became theirs on the day they took the miter 
and crozier, they had to preserve in the country priests a 

^ Bibliothfeque Nationale, Nouvelles acquisitions latiaes, No. 2311. 



PARISHES AND PRIESTS 41 

spiritual and religious character, without which they would 
promptly have lost their control. 



The parish was not then, as now, a purely ecclesiastical 
organization. This petty seigniory with its special character 
belonged not only to the church represented by the bishop 
or his delegate, the archdeacon; it was, in certain respects, 
also the property of the " patron." And this patron was 
often a layman, the owner of the neighboring chateau, an 
ordinary knight, a notable resident of the village, and some- 
times a more important personage — a count, duke, or even 
the king. 

The lay patron possessed a church under his patronage 
exactly as a family property which passes from father to son. 
Besides the satisfactions to his vanity, the chief place in the 
church and the honors in the procession, he received a share 
of the tithes and the revenue of the parish, a share which 
he could sell, give away, or pledge like any other possession. 
Finally, he had the right of " presenting " to the living — 
that is, of designating the cure, reserving the confirmation 
and investiture to the bishop. In many parts the cure was no 
more than the vassal, partner, agent, or tenant of the patron. 
One can imagine what kind of bargains resulted from this 
presentation to livings by laymen who were under the ne- 
cessity of converting their patronage into ready money. 

Still, under the influence of religious ideals and of the 
growth of monastic orders, the evil diminished day by day. 
The consciences of certain patrons were moved and troubled 
by the situation of the parishes, so contrary to the order of 
things religious and laws ecclesiastical. Impelled by the fear, 
of hell, they strove to rid themselves of this dangerous posr 
session. They gave, or rather sold — for often these gifts were 
only concealed sales — the churches and the revenues they had 
to some nearby monastery, to a celebrated abbey, or to the 
bishopric. Thus the revenues of the church returned to the 
church, and churchmen became the patrons who nominated 
the cures, a warranty for a better selection of the parochial 
clergy. But, in the time of Philip Augustus, this progressive 
movement had not reached the same stage in all dioceses. 



42 SOCIAL FEANCE 

Many parishes, perhaps the majority, still remained under 
lay patronage, a grievous situation for the dignity and even 
the morality of the incumbent priests, and unfavorable to the 
exercise of episcopal rights. 

The first of these rights, and one of the most important, 
was the control of the foundation of parochial churches and 
chaplaincies; for new ones were always being created, and 
the church did not lack the opportunity of extending her 
spiritual and temporal domain, and of increasing the number 
of clerics. As soon as the church, to satisfy the needs of the 
faithful, determined to divide a parish, some benefactor, in 
order to insure the safety of his soul, paid the expenses of 
the foundation. It was the episcopal authority which decided 
the matter. 

Toward the end of the twelfth century the church of Saint- 
Pierre of Ribemont, a large town in the environs of Saint- 
Quentin, was under the patronage of the neighboring abbey 
of Saint-Nicolas-des-Pres, and the widely extended limits 
of the parish included the locality of Villers-le-Sec ; but there 
was only one *cure to serve Ribemont and Villers. The in- 
habitants of the latter requested the bishop of Laon to declare 
their chapel an independent parish, because they had a little 
church, Notre-Dame, in their midst where baptisms and inter- 
ments had taken place for many, many years. They stated 
that the distance between Ribemont and Villers was too great 
for the one priest of Ribemont to serve both churches satis- 
factorily. Besides, the priest lived within the walls of the 
chateau of Ribemont; this made it difficult for him to come 
out, especially at night, and thus it happened that resi- 
dents of Villers died without having received the Extreme 
Unction and without having been able to make their 
wiUs. 

This question of division gave rise to a long process which 
reached as far as Rome. The abbot of Saint-Nicolas and the 
cure of Ribemont did not wish to have the parish divided. 
They asserted that the revenues of the church of Ribemont 
were not enough to support two persons. The people of 
Villers, on the other hand, urged on by a cleric who aspired 
to the leadership of the future parish, persistently demanded 
the separation. But they did not stop with pleading and 



PARISHES AND PRIESTS 43 

with exhausting every degree of jurisdiction. They came to 
blows. 

On the strength of a certain judgment the priest of Villers, 
imagining himseK cure already, one day entered the chapel 
of Notre-Dame, together with all the faithful. The abbot of 
Saint -Nicolas hastened forward to forbid them to enter. He 
was put out of doors, and complained that he was even struck. 
The men of the abbey came up in force and surrounded the 
chapel, which the priest of Villers refused to leave. There 
he was watched by sentinels, who did not let him get out of 
the chapel or out of sight, and who deprived him of nourish- 
ment for four days. They proposed to reduce him by starva- 
tion. The wretch would rather have died than surrender 
what he considered his right had not the bishop of Laon 
ordered the siege to be stopped. Innocent III, on May 16, 
1198, concluded to authorize the division. But the town of 
Villers proved too poor to sustain its new cure. The abbot 
of Saint-Nicolas and the cure of Ribemont showed the great- 
est iU-will in giving the cure of Villers any part of the 
revenues of the old parish. In 1204, the bishop of Laon inter- 
vened anew, at the order of the pope, to settle the difference : 
" Seeing," said he, " that since the division the priest of 
Ribemont has less to do and he of Villers lacks the necessary 
resources, the abbot of Saint-Nicolas shall be compelled to 
give the latter a measure of wheat in addition to the living 
furnished to the cure of Ribemont." A curious history this, 
which shows us the papacy as supreme authority intervening 
in the most minute affairs of the ecclesiastical life of the 
land. 

When some individual founded a church, the ecclesiastical 
authorities accepted the gift eagerly, but they took good care 
to fix the conditions. They no longer permitted the founder 
to be, as had once been the case, the absolute master of his 
church and cure. In 1195, the seignior of the district of 
Beauvoir, in Limousin, sought from the bishop of Limoges 
the permission to build a parochial chapel in his town. The 
bishop assented, but stipulated that the cure be endowed ; the 
whole income from the tithes should be his and, in addition, 
the kitchen of the seignior should furnish him the necessities 
of life for the balance of his days; the chaplain should be 



44 SOCIAL FRANCE 

subject immediately to the bishop and should always be ap- 
pointed by him. In 1202, two property-holders announced 
that they stood ready to pay the costs of a chaplaincy at 
Rennemoulin (Seine-et-Oise), provided the chapel was served 
by a member of the order of the Trinity. The bishop of 
Paris gave the authorization, but in the charter, together 
with a detailed statement of the revenues, he inserted a clause, 
by which he reserved the right of naming and dismissing the 
cure and of exacting an oath of obedience from him. It 
was not enough for a founder to give an endowment ; when, 
in 1204, a lord of Chevreuse obtained the permission to estab- 
lish a parochial church and chapel, he was compelled to give 
the site on which to build the church with its presbytery and 
cemetery, and the chapel with its garden; only during his 
life and that of his wife should he enjoy the advowson, which 
after their death should revert to the bishop. The heyday of 
feudal patronage had passed; the church was becoming more 
and more distinct from the lay world ; she accepted gifts, but 
she chose not to be subject to those who gave them. 

The bishop took these precautions even when the founda- 
tion proceeded from a churchman, either to secure his own 
rights or to assure the maintenance of the general condition 
of things. In 1204, a deacon of Saint-Cloud desired to endow 
a special chaplaincy in the grand chapel of the bishop of Paris 
at Saint-Cloud. Two conditions were imposed upon him: 
after the death of the founder and his brother, who were 
to be the first cures, the bishop should name their successors ; 
and the chapel should never enter into competition with the 
parish church of Saint-Cloud in the collection of offerings 
and other parochial revenues. It was important to see that 
these new services did not operate to the detriment of the old. 

This was a serious matter, like all questions in which the 
material interests of men are at stake ; and especially serious 
if the founder was a monk, because then it became an eternal 
competition, a permanent conflict between the secular church 
and the congregations. The latter were interested in multi- 
plying the creation of churches served by the monastic clergy ; 
for these increased their influence as well as their temporal 
resources. In 1205, the monks of the priory of Deuil sought 
permission to build a chapel at Gonesse. The bishop of Paris, 



PARISHES AND PRIESTS 45 

in sanctioning it, carefully safeguarded the interests of the 
cure of Gonesse and of Saint-Pierre, the parish church. The 
cure should as before keep the income from visits, confessions, 
burials, marriages, churchings, baptisms, and the offerings of 
the five high feast days — Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, All 
Saints' Day, and the Nativity of Saint Peter and of Saint 
Paul. To be sure, these five feasts should also be celebrated in 
the chapel of the monks, but these were expressly forbidden 
to admit any of the parishioners of Saint-Pierre to their mass 
on those days. Detailed as these rules were, they could not 
foresee all the causes of trouble, and the interested parties 
found means of circumventing them. At the time of Philip 
Augustus, contests between cures and monks on the subject 
of parochial rights were of daily occurrence in all provinces; 
the rivalry of the monastic, menaced the secular clergy more 
and more. A new chapter was to be added to the story when 
the mendicant orders appeared. 



Another difficulty lay in the recruiting of the parish clergy. 
"When the patronage was clerical the true cure was the bishop, 
the dean of the chapter, or the abbot ; the officiating clergyman 
was only a substitute, a vicar. He had all the cares without 
the dignity; he received only a small part of the revenues 
of the parish. Here was the first fault. Churchmen who 
held the advowson to parishes felt the necessity of avoiding 
too poor a choice. But lay patrons, more concerned about 
their own interests than the capacity of the candidates, nomi- 
nated their own creatures or even sold the living to the 
highest bidder. 

The parishes, then, were managed by unworthy or ignorant 
clerics, who often enough were not priests, and refused to 
strive to attain that rank. Many of them, either incapable or > 
too young, did not take the trouble or had not the right to \ 
officiate personally in their chui^phes. They did not reside 
there, and had services performed by more or less underpaid 
substitutes, who themselves had little promise. Others, hus- 
bands and fathers, arranged to transmit their benefices to 
their sons. Inheritance of these functions did actually exist 
in some parts, despite all prohibitions. 



46 SOCIAL FRANCE 

True, the bishop had the right and duty of controlling the 
nomination of the cures. The patron was obliged to present 
his candidate to him. The bishop, prompted by the arch- 
deacon or dean, examined the candidate and was expected 
to refuse to invest him with the cure of souls, if he showed 
himself unfit or lacking the canonical qualifications of age 
and morality. But how could all bishops do their duty in an 
age which lacked means of communication and regular and 
effective facilities of control? Usually the bishop contented 
himself with approving the choice made by the patrons. The 
examination was a joke : the candidate declined a Latin noun, 
conjugated an indicative mood, named the principal parts 
of a verb, chanted a little, and that was all. 

The law was not only misapplied ; it was evaded. A candi- 
date who feared the examination of his bishop had himself 
ordained by a bishop of some other diocese, of another prov- 
ince, or even by one of the many bishops in partibus {trans- 
marini). All that was necessary was for him to show his 
diocesan an act of ordination sealed with an episcopal seal. 
And, if the head of the diocese was seized with scruples and 
refused to accept the cure presented by his patron, the re- 
jected candidate appealed to Rome. This made an investiga- 
tion and a decision by papal delegates necessary. During all 
this time the parochial office remained vacant, and its func- 
tion suffered; or, perchance, the intruder installed himself 
provisionally in the living, and ended by keeping it. All 
these operations were condemned by a series of councils, an 
indication that it was impossible to stop them. The papal 
prohibitions were hardly more effective. Lucius III, in 1181, 
wrote to the archbishop of Rouen: 



" Do not allow clerics to serve parishes, who are not priests and 
who are not disposed to enter the priesthood. Do not, hereafter, 
accept those who are not disposed to enter the priesthood. Do not, 
hereafter, accept those who are unwilling to officiate in their churches 
in person. When patrons make a bad choice, name an incumbent 
yourself, and do not let appeals to Rome stop you." 



In 1185, Urban III commanded the abbot of Fecamp ' ' not 
to tolerate it that, in certain churches of his patrons, the 



PARISHES AND PRIESTS 47 

sons of cures succeeded their fathers." Habits and customs 
were stronger than law. 

These cures did not regard themselves as church func- 
tionaries subject to the bishop. The bishop was far away, 
and his tours of inspection intermittent; he could not make 
his rounds complete. To be sure, the cures were compelled 
to come to the chief place of the diocese to attend the annual 
synod, where the bishop reminded them of the duties of their 
positions, gave them useful advice, disciplined those who had 
been accused by means of penance, suspension, or removal. 
He required their attendance at the synod all the more 
strictly, because it gave him a chance to collect a tax. But 
priests with uneasy consciences took good care not to make 
the journey. One of the first statutes of a synod held be- 
tween 1197 and 1208 by Eudes of Sully, bishop of Paris, 
commanded clergymen to attend assemblies in person or^ in 
the event of having a legitimate excuse for not coming, to 
be represented by a chaplain or a cleric; manifestly not 
all cures came. Attendance upon synods was probably quite 
regular in a diocese like that of Paris, where the presence 
of Philip Augustus assured comparative peace. But how 
could a bishop hope to assemble all the priests of his diocese 
in the provinces, where the suzerain was impotent or war was 
perennial? The cure withdrew into his church, where 
he was almost as safe as the lord of the neighboring 
castle. 

Disobedience, even open rebellion, was not rare. In 1192, 
the synod of Toul threatened those excommunicated, sus- 
pended, and deposed clerics who persisted in saying the mass 
and in performing the duties of their offices, with deprivation 
for good and all of every benefice and ecclesiastical function. 
The council of Rouen excommunicated clerics who took force- 
ful possession of a living against the wish of the bishop and 
with the aid of a layman. Preachers thundered against these 
rebellious priests: 

"When some one undertakes to rebuke them for a fault they 
appeal to the supreme tribunal of the pope. They delight in bring- 
ing an action against their superiors, and insolently dare their 
bishops. Just as soon as any one attempts to correct them they 
begin to cry : ' To Rome ; to Rome ! ' They delude the pope, they 



48 SOCIAL FRANCE 

artfully fill his bosom with lies, and they slander all who are set 
over them." 

At last the papacy itself found this crying abuse of appeal 
to Rome intolerable, fatal to the whole hierarchy and to all 
discipline, and Lucius III did not hesitate to brand it in a 
letter addressed to Maurice of Sully, bishop of Paris: 

" We hear that certain priests of your bishopric do not blush 
openly to violate the law respecting concubiaage and that, when you 
seek to reprove them, they meet you with an appeal to Rome. They 
think they can in this way evade the lawful penalty, and persist 
in their vice. But the process of appeal was not invented to facili- 
tate the sinning of priests. By virtue of our apostolic power we 
grant you the following right : every priest who, informed and noti- 
fied, cannot or will not submit to canonical purgation within a space 
of forty days, shall be suspended. You shall pronounce against 
him, despite any objection he may make and, notwithstanding every 
appeal to our court. Recaleitraiits shall be punished by the loss of 
their benefices and livings." 

A sage measure; but, as a matter of fact, the vt^ell-known 
phrase " notwithstanding every appeal," a platonic satis- 
faction for the bishops, was never seriously applied. It still 
behooved the diocesan authority to be prudent in the use of 
its right to proceed with rigor against a rebellious priest. 
The cleric of this age, unworthy as he was, was a sacred 
being, upon whom it was dangerous to lay one 's hands. 

A priest had been convicted before Bishop Eudes of Sully 
of leading a vicious life and was compelled by the authorities 
to leave Paris. The bishop died in 1208; immediately the 
condemned returned to Paris without permission, and con- 
tinued his scandalous conduct. But the new head of the dio- 
cese, Peter of Nemours, had the audacious fellow arrested. 
He was thrown into the episcopal prison of Vitry. When he 
attempted to escape by digging the ground of the cell in 
which he was incarcerated, he was transferred to a safer 
prison at Saint-Cloud. There he made himself so disagree- 
able that one day the warden lost his patience, abused the 
prisoner and struck him, — a grave mistake! for ic was for- 
bidden to strike a cleric. The bishop was informed of what 
had happened, and commanded the prisoner to be set at 



PARISHES AND PRIESTS 49 

liberty. The warden, knowing what consequences his act 
would have, abandoned his position and fled. 

The affair did not end there. The dishonored and incor- 
rigible priest, in his turn, became accuser and brought an 
action against his bishop. In 1209, Peter of Nemours ap- 
peared before a court of arbitration, composed of the abbot 
of Saint-Victor and a canon of Notre-Dame. The priest was 
perfectly willing to admit that the bishop was not responsible 
for the outrage and the violence of which he had been the 
victim, that the guard had acted without orders and without 
the knowledge of his superior, and he swore, with his hand 
on the Gospels, that for this reason he would never attempt 
to avenge himself upon the bishop or his connections. But 
he demanded to be restored into the favor of the bishop. At 
the request of the arbiters and as an evidence of reconcilia- 
tion, Peter of Nemours was obliged to give him the kiss of 
peace. 



Carefully reading the commands and prohibitions of coun- 
cils, one soon perceives that the chief occupation of the church 
authorities was to put a stop to the misconduct and vicious- 
ness of the lower clergy. To the church this was a secret \ 
malady, a running sore. Southern France apparently suf- ' 
fered especially from it. If we may believe the catholic 
chroniclers, the character of the cures of Aquitaine, Langue- 
doc, and Provence had fallen to the last stage of degrada- 
tion. William of Puylaurens asserts that they were held in 
utter contempt: 

" They were classed with the Jews. Nobles who had the patronage 
of parochial churches took good care not to nominate their own 
relatives to the livings ; they gave them to the sons of their peasants, 
or their serfs, for whom they naturally had no respect." 

The council of Avignon of 1209 states, in substance, that 
** priests do not differ from laymen either in appearance or 
in conduct," and that ** they are forever plunging into the 
most shameful debauchery (immunditiis et excessibus im- 
plican-tur) .^ ^ One can understand the readiness with which 



50 SOCIAL FRANCE 

the southern peoples abandoned Catholicism and embraced 
the teachings of the Albigenses and Waldenses. 

Still, it need not be supposed that the priests of the north 
were spotless. Less secularized and better controlled, they 
still laid themselves open to serious charges, which the church 
herself did not spare them. Conciliar decrees contain the 
outlines of a description of manners which is rich in color, and 
of which these are the principal features. 

In the first place, without speaking of those who are cures 
only in name and that only for the purpose of obtaining the 
revenues of their living, the active clergymen too willingly 
avoided the duty of residence. Everywhere they were seen 
outside of their parishes, on the pretext of studying in the 
schools, of seeking a shrine, or of visiting a colleague. Yet 
they were not supposed to absent themselves without the con- 
sent of the bishop or his representative. 

Their behavior was not seemly for churchmen. Not a few 
let their hair grow and concealed their tonsure. After the 
fashion of laymen, they wore green or red materials, open 
vestments, large sleeves, trimmings of silver or some other 
metal, garments scalloped at the bottom, and pointed shoes. 
They carried arms and walked about with dogs and falcons. 
Infractions of church laws were just as numerous as were 
the liberties denied to priests on pain of losing their 
benefices. Amongst other things, they were forbidden to 
have more than a given number of dishes at table. If clerics 
hoped to have authority over their parishioners, they must 
begin by being different from them. 

These cures were not content with being priests ; they prac- 
tised other professions. Some were lawyers, some doctors, 
others were stewards or officers of a lay seignior, and still 
others fuU-fiedged business men, trading in grain and wine 
and lending money at high interest. Councils stormed vio- 
lently against these merchant-priests and usurers. They were 
allowed to be attorneys in certain special cases only — those 
in which the interests of the church, of widows, or orphans 
were at stake. To be precise, they could still appear in 
behalf of their parishioners, but they were forbidden to exact 
fees. Their sole claim was to have their expenses paid, pro- 
vided these were not padded. *' We perceive from your 



PARISHES AND PRIESTS 51 

communication," wrote Honorius III to the bishop of Poitiers, 
*• that certain clerics of your city and diocese, in their avidity 
to make money, trample under foot the dignity of the sacer- 
dotal office. They perform the duties of attorneys to an 
imprudent extent, much to every one's chagrin. Others for- 
get clerical honor to the point of engaging in trade and buy 
and sell merchandise. They seem traders rather than clerics. 
Thus they debase the high calling with which they are 
endowed." 

Avarice drove them to acts still more reprehensible. Re- 
garding the parochial church as their property, they rented 
it to some private individual; they sold or mortgaged the 
buildings or grounds which belonged to the benefice, without 
the authorization of the bishop. They gave certain persons, 
especially their relatives, shares of, or incomes from, the rev- 
enues of the parish. When their purses were exhausted, they 
pawned the sacerdotal vestments and utensils used in the 
services. In a word, they exploited their benefices in every 
possible way. The outcome was that some cures, not content 
with coining money out of their own charges, rented other 
churches and extended their operations to them. Ev6rythkig 
had its price, even the title and the functions of the dean. 

Needless to say, these business men shamelessly exploited 
their sacerdotal functions and the administration of the sac- 
raments. They performed clandestine marriages for money; 
they demanded pay before performing the ceremony of 
baptism, marriage, burial, or Extreme Unction. That they 
accepted a compensation afterwards, but never before, may 
be true; yet, they should have exacted nothing before or 
after. " They are forbidden to leave the bodies of deceased 
parishioners above ground in order to extort money, ' ' decreed 
the council of Paris in 1208. That of 1212 condemned certain 
cures who compelled invalids to bequeath sums for masses 
to be said for one, three, or even seven years. Manifestly 
they could not say all these masses ; they unloaded them upon 
hired substitutes. Finally, according to a canon of the coun- 
cil of Rouen of 1189, the cures scandalously abused their privi- 
leges by excluding from church and sacraments those parish- 
ioners whom they disliked, or from whom they desired to 
make some profit. 



52 SOCIAL FRANCE 

Still, if they had conscientiously performed the duties of 
their ministry! One of the most important of these was 
preaching. But a great many of the cures, profoundly 
ignorant, did not preach at all, and for a good reason. Still, 
as it was necessary for the parishioners to be instructed, they 
imported professional preachers. There were clerics, and 
even laymen, who made a business of itinerant preaching. 
Fortunately for the incompetent cures, these moved from 
parish to parish for a pecuniary consideration. They even 
gave rise to an occupation of a peculiar character: they 
formed ' ' preaching companies, ' ' which contracted by the year 
for all the sermons of the diocese, or of a group of parishes, 
and furnished preachers to those who required them. There 
is proof that this strange organization actually operated in 
Normandy. 

The church was alarmed; in several instances she forbade 
the employment of itinerant preachers. She feared, and 
not without reason, that these strangers would spread the 
seed of false doctrines amongst the people, and that heresy 
would steal in through the sermon. The council of Paris of 
1212 forbade all sermons by strangers, unless they were 
authorized by the bishop of the diocese, and also forbade 
cures to allow mass to be said by unknown priests. 

One is curious to know what could have been the nature 
of the teaching given to the parishioners by clerics almost 
absolutely illiterate, incapable even of memorizing or of read- 
ing correctly from the collections of ready-made sermons, 
such as that which Maurice of Sully, bishop of Paris, had 
prepared for the use of his diocesans. To make up for their 
incapacity and to impress their hearers, certain village cures, 
in the remoter regions employed childish tactics. When they 
preached, they placed on the edge of the balustrade of the 
pulpit a wooden crucifix, within which was concealed a spring, 
by means of which the preacher could move the head, eyes, 
or tongue of Christ without any visible movement of his 
hands. The spring was set in motion by means of an iron 
rod, which extended through the whole length of the crucifix 
and its base, and which was worked by means of the foot. 
One of these fraudulent crucifixes, coming from a little church 
in Auvergne and dating from the end of the twelfth een- 



PARISHES AND PRIESTS 53 

tury, is to be seen in the Musee de Cluny (Museum num- 
ber, 724). 

Finally, the councils reproach the cures with letting pa- 
rishioners dance in the church, in the cemeteries, in proces- 
sions, and with being present themselves at these dances, as 
well as at the improper exhibitions given by players and 
buffoons. They were accused of being gamesters; dice, even 
chess, and frequenting taverns were forbidden them. Some 
of them were blamed for their repulsive slovenliness and for 
the poor care of their churches. With an especial vigor were 
branded the two vices most common in this class: intoxica- 
tion and incontinence. The less reprehensible of the clerics 
were those who kept a concubine at the presbytery, whom the 
people quite naturally called the '* priestess," and the coun- 
cils focaria, " the keeper of the house " or of '* the hearth." 

The preachers at the time of Philip Augustus justify the 
strictures of the councils by giving testimony quite as un- 
favorable to the parochial clergy. " Our priests," says 
Geoffrey of Troyes, " immersed in material things, disturb 
themselves little about those of the spirit. They differ from 
the laymen in dress, not at heart; in appearance, not in re- 
ality. They belie by their deeds what they preach from the 
pulpit. Tonsure, garb, and speech give them the superficial 
varnish of piety; underneath the sheep's clothing are con- 
cealed hypocrites and ravening wolves." When Bishop 
Maurice of Sully, in the preface to his preacher's manual, 
addresses himself to the cures of his diocese, he himself 
unreservedly reveals their weak points, their bad manners, 
their ignorance, and their repugnance to preaching. He is 
obliged to remind them that a blameless life, vita sancta, is 
necessary in a priest who daily approaches the altar, and 
that their first virtue, next to continence, should be sobriety. 
He also urges them to be humble, to love their neighbors, 
to be patient and generous; on the other hand, he desires 
them to have a correct knowledge, recta scientia: for which 
reason they should read and procure books from which they 
can learn their duties — the indispensable liturgical works, a 
book of sacraments, of collects, a formulary for baptisms, a 
calendar, a psalter, a book of homilies, and a penitential. 
Finally, they must preach, not only by example, but by word 



54 SOCIAL FEANCE 

of mouth — an essential part of their ministry, a duty which 
they are forbidden to evade. 

Compare the specific accusations made by the councils and 
preachers of this period with the conditions denounced thirty 
years later in the Journal of Visitation of Eudes Eigaud, 
archbishop of Eouen : the exact agreement of the facts leaves 
no doubt respecting the sad intellectual and moral condition 
of the lower clergy. The church herself fully confirms the 
evil. When one sees her judge her members so harshly, why 
be surprised at the attacks and the caustic satires of profane 
literature? The picture which we have just painted on the 
basis of ecclesiastical documents does not differ from the 
Journal of Eudes Eigaud, which might, for all the world, be 
an exact and living commentary on the fiction of the epoch. 

According to the most competent specialists, these lays for 
the greater part belong to the end of the twelfth or the 
beginning of the thirteenth century. The historian of Philip 
Augustus, then, may seek in them particulars about customs 
and traits of real life, which form the framework within 
which the fancy of the narrator plays, and which, so to speak, 
unintentionally escape from his thought and pen.^ 

The authors of the tales particularly blame the lower clergy. 
To them a priest is, of necessity, a perverted and sensual 
creature, who delights in adventures at the expense of noble 
and plebeian husbands. But they do take care to distinguish 
between the common cleric, the student who has only the 
tonsure and garb and is free to marry, and the cure — properly 
speaking, the minister of the parish. The cleric — the lover 
of the stories, as M. Bedier has very aptly expressed it — is 
interesting, and ordinarily fortune favors him; the cure — 
gluttonous, covetous, formidable in every respect to his flock — 

^ In his excellent Eistoire de la litterature frangaise (1896), M. Lanson 
seems to attribute no historical value, or at least very little, to the 
fabliaux. According to him the authors described only imaginary social 
deformities or exceptional evils. They spoke of priests who lived evil 
lives; "but what brings mistrust, is precisely that there are too many 
of them." As far as the conduct of the parochial clergy of the country 
is concerned, it is enough to compare the eonciliar texts of which we 
have given the substance, the Journal of Eudes Rigaud of the thirteenth 
century, and the contents of the archives of the district of Troyea 
(Inventaire sommaire, 1898) of the fifteenth century, with the fabliaux, to 
convince one's self that the romancers were not exaggerating. 



PARISHES AND PRIESTS 55 

is nearly always mistreated and dishonored as a villain. He 
is the laughing-stock and the victim. These scandalous stori- 
ettes generally end in his confusion and misfortune; some- 
times even in his death. The narrators fasten upon this char- 
acter with a ferocious pleasure and drag it through the mire. 
This malignant asperity of satire can be explained only by 
an accumulated malice against these unworthy priests, given 
to abusing their office by exploiting and dishonoring their 
parishioners. But in the excesses of these comical or gro- 
tesque narratives there abound traits of the time taken 
from life, and truth appears with the exact color of the 
past. 

Nothing is more instructive than the tale entitled Le pretre 
et le chevalier. A knight arrives at a village and, not know- 
ing where to spend the night, questions the first person he 
encounters, " By the soul of thy father, name for me the 
richest man of this locality." "It is our cure," responds 
the other, " the richest person for ten leagues round about; 
but at the same time perfidious and most selfish ; he loves no 
one but himself. About his house are scoundrels . . . hor- 
rible as wolves or leopards. It were better to go to the home 
of the priest, for of two evils one should choose the lesser." 
' ' Where is the chaplain 's house ? " " That one yonder, with 
the chimney; the one so pretty and stylish." The knight 
rides up to the house and sees the cure stretched upon his 
back at the window. He requests entertainment for the night. 
" Sir Knight," says the cure, " leave me in peace and be 
on thy way. I shall lodge no one, not even the king, should 
he come hither. I am alone with my niece, and my friend," 
(the word serves in this literature to designate the priestess). 
The chevalier persists, '* I will give thee of my possessions 
what thou requirest for a handsome altar." Then the cure 
deigns to notice him and the bargaining begins. Before 
receiving the stranger, he stipulates that five sous (ten 
francs) shall be paid for each dish to be served. The knight 
agrees to the price. He enters; Dame Avinee (the symbolic 
name of the friend) prepares the table; the host himself 
assists in the kitchen: he shells the almonds. Then a sub- 
stantial meal is served and, after dessert, the cure presents 
his guest with an intermiaable bill, in which every article 



56 SOCIAL FRANCE 

is reckoned at five sous — the meats, the wine, the salt, the 
table, the cloth, the pots, the oats for the horse, the hay, the 
stable-litter, even the bed upon which the chevalier is to 
sleep. Little matters the strange conceit by which the cheva- 
lier managed to pay his debt without opening his purse: the 
point at issue is that in this little comedy there is not a 
shadow of complaint at the cunning of the concubinary priest 
or at his irregular establishment. 

The family life of the priest and the priestess became a part 
of the times; almost a social institution. A cure depicted in 
the story, Boucher d'Ahheville, enjoys a comfortable home, 
for he has many conveniences and possesses a number of ani- 
mals. He, too, has a ' ' friend, ' ' who, aided by a servant, does 
the honors of the presbytery. She sups with him and with 
his guest, the butcher of Abbeville. " They were richly 
served with good meat and good wine; white linens were 
produced to make a bed fo" the butcher." Betimes in the 
morning the priest arose. " He and his cleric went to the 
convent to chant and do their duty ; the dame remained sleep- 
iug." This lady is portrayed for us as " very pretty and 
caressable." She is clothed in a green, well-pressed petti- 
coat, with clinging folds. She proudly fingers the folds at 
her waist. Her eyes are bright and smiling. She is pretty 
and pleasant as one could wish." W^ are even permitted 
to witness a private scene in which the lady insults and 
strikes the servant with her stick, " Lady," says the latter, 
" what have I stolen from you? " " My barley and my 
wheat, wretch; my peas, my lard, and my fresh bread." 
Clearly, she is mistress of the house. What proves that this 
family life shocked no one is another instance in which a 
priest in wrath against the priestess cried, " You shall no 
longer be my friend." He threatened to expel her, and to 
do it before all the neighbors. 

The cure feared only one power, the bishop ; but the bishops 
of romance are not especially severe. One narrator tells of 
three persons living at the presbytery — the cure, his mother, 
and his friend. The mother complained to the bishop that 
her son did not give her the bare necessities of life, though 
he found nothing too beautiful to clothe the *' priestess." 
** He gowns her well and beautifully. She has a pretty skirt 



PARISHES AND PRIESTS 57 

and a good cloak; two good and beautiful fur-coats — one of 
squirrel, the other of lambskin — and a costly silver-tissue, of 
which many people speak," The bishop summoned the cure 
to his court together with two hundred other cures, and threat- 
ened him with suspension if he did not treat his mother with 
more consideration. He never thought of rebuking him for 
living with a friend. 

Still (and this very likely partakes of historic fact) a less 
good-natured bishop of Bayeux commanded a cure of his 
diocese to dismiss his priestess, named Dame Auberee. He 
closed by condemning the priest to abstain from drinking 
wine, if he failed to obey the command. Dame Auberee, a 
sly creature, counseled the priest to obey : he would no longer 
drink wine, he would sip it. Informed of the subterfuge, the 
bishop forbade the offender to eat goose. " Good! " said 
the dame to the cure, ** in place of eating goose, you will 
eat as much gander as you like, for you have more than thirty 
of them." Again came the injunction of the bishop, who 
forbade the cure to sleep on his feather-bed. Dame Auberee 
made him a bed of pillows. It is impossible to relate in 
detail how these two culprits compelled the bishop to say 
no more. 

In certain tales one sees in what a strange way the cures 
discharged their functions. Here a priest falsely charges a 
villein with having married his godmother, expels him from 
the church, and fixes his fine at seven livres. There, on a 
Good Friday the officiating clergyman, at the point of chant- 
ing the Gospels, becomes confused in the bookmarks of his 
missal, with which he is none too well acquainted, and, losing 
his head, he stammers some vague Latin words, quite out of 
place in the liturgy of the Passion, until he is perfectly sure 
that all his parishioners have had a chance to contribute to 
the collection. Elsewhere the cure is the victim of a trick 
which a penniless cleric played on his innkeeper. He prom- 
ised the hotelkeeper, who demanded payment, that the cure 
would pay for him. The two went together to the church. 
There the cleric drew the cure aside: " Sire, I have taken 
lodging with this good fellow, your parishioner; since last 
night a cruel ailment troubles him: he has had a slight at- 
tack of insanity. Here are ten pence; read a gospel over 



58 SOCIAL FRANCE 

him." The cure said to the tavernkeeper, " Wait until I 
have said my mass and I will attend to your affair." The 
latter, thinking that he was going to be paid, was reassured 
and patient, but in the interval the cleric made his escape. 
The mass finished, the cure desired his parishioner to kneel; 
but the latter stoutly declared that he wanted money, not ex- 
orcisms. What could be a better proof of his malady ! Held 
by the strongest swains of the parish, he protested in vain ; he 
was sprinkled with Holy-water, a gospel was read over him, 
but of the sum owing him he obtained not a mite. 

It would be easy to compare the prohibitions of councils 
with the corresponding features of the tales and show how 
the latter explain the former. To give a single example : the 
church authorities often forbade parish priests to play at dice. 
The tale, Du pretre et des deux ribauds, tells of a cure who 
lost his money and even his horse at playing dice with two 
fiddlers whom he chanced to meet on the way. The highway- 
men had cheated; their dice were loaded, and it was not 
without trouble that their victim regained possession of his 
mount, though not of his purse. 



In endeavoring to understand the condition of the parochial 
clergy of the time of Philip Augustus, there is no use in 
looking for analogies in present France, where the greater 
number of our rural priests has, as a whole, become respect- 
able and respectful to the laws of the church. One should 
look beyond the Atlantic at the inferior status of the Spanish 
clergy, in Chile, or in Peru, or among the American catholics 
of the South: the concubinary cures and their more than 
easy manners, sanctioned by the tolerance of Creole life, carry 
us back to the heart of the middle age. Still the middle 
age had the excuse of the low state of surrounding civiliza- 
tion, the rustic locality from which the priests came and 
where they were compelled to live. Besides, it is fair to 
think that the parish priests as a body were not so vicious 
and incapable as one might suppose from the accusations 
of their superiors and from the derision of the minstrels. 

We know at least one cure among the contemporaries of 
Philip Augustus who was quite the opposite of an ignoramus. 



PAEISHBS AND PRIESTS 59 

for he occupies a high place in the historical literature of his 
time. This exception is worthy of notice. 

This cure, Lambert, was attached to the church of Ardres, 
the principal place of a petty serjeanty, belonging to the 
county of Flanders. He was a married priest, or perhaps 
had been married before taking orders; at any rate, he him- 
self speaks of his daughter and two sons without the least 
hesitation. The date of his birth is not known any more 
than that of his death; all that is certain is that he lived 
at the beginning of the thirteenth century; the last item in 
his chronicle belongs to the year 1203. 

This chronicle portrays him constantly engaged in the 
performance of his duties. It was not always pleasant to 
do them. No more than the monks were the cures sheltered 
from the brutality of the feudal barons. 

Baldwin II, count of Guines and seignior of Ardres, had 
a son, Arnoul, whom the archbishop of Reims excommunicated 
for an act of violence. The strict duty of the cure was to 
heed the decree of anathema and forbid the excommunicate 
to enter the church. One day it came to pa^s that the count 
of Guines notified Lambert that his son had just been ab- 
solved by an agent of the archbishop, and that he should ring 
his bells to announce the absolution to all the parishioners. 
This assertion of the father seeming insufficient, the troubled 
cure sought an avenue of escape and requested a delay, to 
secure information. Finally he decided to go to Baldwin in 
person. He met him on the road, accompanied by his son 
and an escort of soldiers. Baldwin received him with a 
fearful volley of reproaches and insults; that of disobedient 
and rebellious priest was the kindest of these. " Terrified," 
writes the cure, *' by the thunder of his voice and the light- 
ning of his eyes which glowed like burning coals, blasted by 
his invectives, I fell from my horse almost unconscious, at 
his feet. The soldiers helped me up and I regained my saddle 
as best I could. It was only after I had ridden for some 
time in his suite that he deigned to show me a more encour- 
aging visage." 

Some time after, about 1194, Arnoul married a lady of 
the neighborhood, Beatrice of Bourbourg. The nuptials were 
held at Ardres with great pomp. The account of Lambert 



60 SOCIAL FRANCE 

permits us to be present at one of the ceremonies in which 
the priest played an important role — the benediction of the 
marriage-bed : 

" At nightfall, when groom and bride were placed in the same bed, 
the count of Guines, filled with the zeal of the Holy Spirit, called 
me and my two sons, Baldwin and William, and also Robert, cure of 
Audruicq, and asked us to sprinkle the pair with Holy-water. We, 
therefore, passed completely round the bed, swinging our censors 
filled with precious spices, and called down upon them the benedic- 
tion of Heaven. When we had performed our office with the greatest 
possible care and devotion, the count, still filled with the grace of 
the Spirit, raised his eyes and hands to Heaven and cried : ' Holy 
Lord, Almighty Father, God eternal, Who hast blessed Abraham 
and his seed, pour forth Thy mercy upon us. Deign to bless Thy 
servants joined in the holy bonds of matrimony, that they live in 
good accord in Thy divine love, and that their offspring increase 
until the end of the ages.' We responded ' Amen,' and he added : 

* My dear son Arnoul, who art the eldest of my children, and whom 
I love above all others, if there is any virtue in a blessing which a 
father gives his son, and if it is true that a tradition of our an- 
cestors gives us this right, I bestow on thee, with clasped hands, the 
same favor of benediction which God, the Father, formerly gave 
to Abraham, Abraham to Isaac, and Isaac to his son Jacob.' Arnoul 
bowed his head toward his father and devoutly murmured a Pater 
noster. And the count replied, giving the greatest force and ex- 
pression to his words : * I bless thee, saving the rights of thy brothers, 
that thou possess my blessing forever and ever.' We all responded 

* Amen,' after which we left the nuptial chamber and each went to 
his home." 

Cultured and erudite, this cure of Ardres furnishes one 
of the earliest examples of something nowadays quite com- 
mon: the need which the parish priest experiences of study- 
ing the past of his church and of the locality where it is 
situated. Lambert made himself the historian of the seigniory 
of Ardres and of the county of Guines. This, he himself de- 
clares, he did in the first place to please his master, whom 
the affair of the excommunication had chilled toward him, but 
also for the pleasure of communicating to others the fruit of 
his learned researches, to exhibit a learning rare in those 
days among his kind. 

An enthusiasm dominates this priest, and exuberantly dis- 
plays itself : the love of his parish and of the seigniory which 
surrounds it. For him, the whole world is contained in this 



PAEISHES AND PRIESTS 61 

diminutive fief. In his eyes every part of it assumes imposing 
proportions. In his dithyrambie dedication to the seignior 
of Ardres, he celebrates the glory of Arnoul II as though 
he were treating of Caesar or Alexander. And in the body 
of the same work, speaking of the domains of Baldwin II 
of Guines — ^vassal, like all other barons along the shore of 
the Channel, of both France and England, — he asserts that 
his fief is one of the most precious pearls of the crown of 
France and one of the diamonds which glitter with a bright 
effulgence upon the diadem of the kings of England. A lit- 
tle further on he compares Baldwin II to Jupiter, David, and 
Solomon. Elsewhere, the siege of the castle of Sangate re- 
minds him of the siege of Troy, and he adds, " Had Troy 
been as well defended with soldiers as Sangate, it would have 
withstood the Greeks." 

Very proud of his knowledge, Lambert in his preface at 
one point mentions Ovid, Homer, Pindar, Virgil, Priscian, 
Herodianus, Prosper, Bede, Eusebius, and Saint Jerome — a 
mixture of the sacred and profane which was characteristic 
of the time. He plumes himself on writing a beautiful style. 
The truth is that his far-fetched, involved, and obscure 
phrases weary the reader with their pretentiousness, as la- 
borious as his derivations of certain names are ridiculous. 
Still, the writer does not altogether lack warmth and move- 
ment; several of his narratives have good color and leave a 
lively impression. He taxes his ingenuity from the start to 
vary his narrative and to reawaken the interest of his reader. 
He puts the second part of his story, that which concerns the 
origin of the seigniory of Ardres, into the mouth of an old 
chevalier, Gautier de Cluses, whom he imagines recalling the 
past in the midst of the little seignioral court. 

In short, the cure of Ardres has certain qualities of the 
historian. First, impartiality: for, though he exalts the 
seigniors of Ardres, he does not conceal their weaknesses, not 
even their vices. Throughout one finds a most realistic and 
lively picture of petty feudalism. Though he lacks a critical 
sense in the matter of sources and indiscriminately piles up 
historical facts and legends, he everywhere strives for accu- 
racy. He is cautious with the documents found in historical 
books and in the cartularies. He himself says that, in the 



62 SOCIAL FRANCE 

absence of written sources, he has questioned old residents. 
In the latter part of his work he, like a conscientious witness, 
relates what he has seen and heard. Finally, he has the good 
sense not to attempt to write a universal history from the 
time of Adam and Eve, as did all other chroniclers. He re- 
marks that he has broken with that custom, " to seclude him- 
self in the annals of a very little county." It is regrettable 
that his example was not oftener followed ! 

This parish clergyman, then, somewhat raises the reputation 
of his class, which, as we have just shown, had great need 
of it. 



CHAPTER III 
' THE STUDENT 

When one studies the documents which relate to the 
ecclesiastical society of the end of the twelfth and the begin- 
ning of the thirteenth centuries, one discovers that the names 
of a good many canons and bishops are preceded by the word 
magister, master. They have obtained the master's degree, 
the permission to teach (licentia docendi) in the great schools, 
the universities. They are graduated, a thing characteristic 
of their time : for a hundred years earlier the degree of mas- 
ter was rarely found. In the time of Philip Augustus these 
teaching degrees tended to become an almost necessary quali- 
fication for obtaining important benefices and the chief digni- 
ties of the church. The extent of education among the upper 
classes of clerics is a notable fact of the highest importance, 
an index of a very interesting social progress. Nearly all 
members of the higher clergy began as students: the 
schools were the nurseries of chapters and prelacies. And it 
is the student — or the scholar, scolaris, as he was then called — 
who is now to occupy our attention. 



Certain passionate admirers of the middle ages have gone 
so far as to hold that in the France of that epoch there were 
as many, if not more, schools than there are to-day. This 
is a decided exaggeration ; but the truth is that, for that age 
of inferior civilization, schools were more numerous than one 
would suppose. There was one wherever there was a center 
of religious life, an ecclesiastical community of any im- 
portance, especially in northern France, In every diocese, 
besides the rural or parochial schools which already existed, 
but of which we know nothing at all at the time of Philip 
Augustus, the principal chapters and monasteries had their 

63 



64 SOCIAL FRANCE 

schools, their clientele of masters and pupils. Here were in- 
stmcted not only choir-boys or novices destined to pass their 
entire lives in a cathedral church or an abbey, but scholars 
who wished to enter the clergy in order later to engage in. 
liberal professions or to hold benefices from the church; and 
the sons of nobles and seigniors, or laics, desirous of complet- 
ing the very elementary education their teachers had given 
them, were also welcomed. In a word, to understand the con- 
ditions in the field of instruction of that day, one must picture 
a society in which there were no other educational institutions 
than these large and small seminaries, where the clergy was 
molded and recruited. 

Thus it was that at Paris there existed three groups of 
scholastic establishments: first, the school of Notre-Dame, or 
the group of schools of the bishopric or cathedral, placed under 
the immediate direction of two dignitaries of the chapter — 
the cantor, who supervised the elementary schools, and the 
chancellor, who controlled the advanced schools; second, the 
schools of the principal abbeys, notably of Sainte-Genevieve, 
of Saint- Victor, and of Saint-Germain-des-Pres ; third, private 
schools, founded by clerics who had masterships, the license 
{licentia docendi), and who taught without restraint, though 
always under the control of the bishop or of the chancellor. 
A goodly number of these schools — conducted by ^savants, 
philosophers, or theologians of renown — were in the lie de la 
Cite; and, after the example set by Abelard, even on the 
left bank near the Petit pont; and above all, on the northern 
slope of the height of Sainte-Genevieve. Similarly in Cham- 
pagne we find three schools of the first kind, which are merely 
dependencies of three cathedral chapters : the school of Reims, 
which is the most celebrated; the school of Chalons-sur- 
Marne, and the school of Troyes; then the monastic schools, 
the appendants of the great abbeys of Montieramey, Montier- 
la-Celle, Saint-Remi of Reims, and Saint-Nicolas of Reims; 
and, finally, the smaller schools of certain priories, without 
mentioning the elementary schools. 

In short, it was the church which gave instruction, which 
created masters and conferred upon them the capacity of 
teaching. Bishops, chapters, and abbots had the supreme di- 
rection and control of teaching in the whole extent of their 



THE STUDENT 65 

spiritual and feudal jurisdictions. No one could teach with- 
out their authorization. 

It was a considerable power which had thus passed into 
the hands of ecclesiastical society, but the directors of that 
society took some pains to make it acceptable and justifiable. 
At the end of the twelfth century, they already strove to pro- 
claim and to carry through two principles dear to modern 
society: the gratuity and the freedom of higher instruction. 

In 1179, the third Lateran council, under the presidency of 
Pope Alexander III, in its eighteenth decree, took an action 
of extreme importance. " Every cathedral church shall main- 
tain a master to give free instruction to clerics of the churcli 
and to needy scholars:" this meant gratuitous instruction, 
at least for those who could not pay. " Persons who have 
the duty of directing and supervising the schools — ^that is, 
chancellors and doctors — are forbidden to exact any remunera- 
tion whatsoever from candidates for granting them the license 
to teach : ' ' this is the freedom of the teaching profession. ' ' The 
license shall not be refused to worthy applicants:" this, at 
least in a certain sense, is the freedom of teaching. The 
eleventh decree of the fourth Lateran council, held by Inno- 
cent III in 1215, renewed the regulations. It further deter- 
mined that, in every archiepiscopal or metropolitan church, a 
master of theology, a theologus, should be named to teach his 
subject to priests of the province and to watch over the 
conduct of the parochial priesthood. 

These two decrees were the sign of real progress. By means 
of them the church, which had the monopoly and control of 
public instruction, attempted to justify the important power 
she enjoyed. The papacy, within the hands of which religious 
authority was concentrated, openly sought to complete, unify, 
and regulate this scholastic organization, which, during the 
eleventh and twelfth centuries, had step by step established 
itseK in many French dioceses in the form of isolated and 
spontaneous creations. In respect to the crucial matter of 
the liberty of opening a course or a school, the middle age 
had thus obtained a sort of franchise from Rome. And the 
prescriptions of the councils did not end with being written 
on parchment; efforts were almost immediately made to put 
them into effect. 



66 SOCIAL FRANCE 

Hardly two years after these principles had been pro- 
nounced at the Lateran council of 1179, they received a 
striking application at Montpellier. In establishing the free- 
dom of higher instruction through a charter of January, 
1181, William VIII, seignior of Montpellier and immediate 
vassal of the bishop, without doubt acted in harmony with 
the church; for many other documents of that time prove 
that the school of Montpellier, like all other schools of the 
epoch, was strictly subordinate to the clergy. William VIII 
declares himself opposed to every monopoly of teaching medi- 
cine in his city and seigniory. Notwithstanding the most 
ardent urging and the most alluring offers of money precio 
seu sollicitudine, he will never grant any one the exclusive 
privilege of '* reading " or of conducting schools in materia 
medica {in facultate physice discipline). The motive is curi- 
ous and expressed with perfect lucidity: " Seeing that it 
would be too atrocious and too contrary to justice and re- 
ligion {contra fas et pium), to convey to a single individual 
the right of teaching so excellent a science." Consequently, 
he authorizes all persons, whosoever they be {omnes homines), 
and whencesoever they come, who wish to conduct a school 
of medicine at Montpellier, to teach in his seigniorial city 
with full and complete freedom, regardless of any opposition ; 
and closes by charging his successors not to depart from this 
line of conduct. This was as positive a declaration and 
application of principles as the partizans of the liberty of 
teaching could wish; too positive, in fact, for the lord of 
Montpellier made no mention of the qualifications which so- 
ciety has the right to require of those who constitute its 
medical corps. Later ecclesiastical authority found it neces- 
sary to regulate and define this concession by surrounding 
medical instruction with restrictions conformable to public 
interest. 

In regulating the exercise of the right to teach with a 
liberalism which it would be highly unjust not to recognize, 
the central power of the church gave especial attention to the 
" great schools," or the studia generalia, an expression much 
used in contemporary writings. 

Under ' * great schools ' ' are to be understood those in which 
the national, or indeed international, youth gathered, and 



THE STUDENT 67 

where the whole range of the knowledge of the time was 
taught : in the first place, the * ' liberal arts, ' ' the trivium and 
quadrivium, the immutable foundation of the academic edi- 
fice, the traditional curriculum still divided and organized 
as in the time of the Carolingians ; in the second place, 
the special studies of a professional character — medicine 
(physica), civil law (leges), canon law (decretum), and the- 
ology {sacra pagina). Students of the liberal arts or 
" artists," medics, lawyers, decretists, theologians — all these 
followers of the universities who sought a sacerdotal career or 
what we to-day call the " liberal " professions — ^by prefer- 
ence crowded into certain cities. Paris, Orleans, and Angers 
in the north; Toulouse and Montpellier in the south, were, 
in the time of Philip Augustus, the preeminent school- 
centers. But some of these great centers of general studies 
already had specialties which attracted the Frenchman and 
the stranger : at Paris, dialectic and theology ; at Orleans, civil 
law and rhetoric ; at Montpellier, medicine. Before the grow- 
ing prosperity of these schools, others — as Chartres and Eeims, 
which had had their period of glory in the eleventh century — 
declined and were obscured. Bit by bit they fell to the rank 
of local seminaries. 

A common trait of these schools is the cosmopolitan char- 
acter not only of the students, but also of the teachers. Knowl- 
edge being then entirely ecclesiastical, and the church of the 
time cosmopolitan, education had the same character. Paris, 
like Orleans and Montpellier, furnished graduated clerics for 
all Europe. Not a few foreign masters were provided with 
benefices, eanonries, or even bishoprics in France, and vice 
versa. National boundaries did not exist for the ecclesiastical 
power, which had its head and government at Eome. The 
exchange of clerics between different countries became all the 
more frequent because the papacy, of its own accord, began 
to distribute a certain number of benefices in France as well 
as elsewhere, and bestowed them on strangers. As illustra- 
tion, it is enough to mention two literary and religious 
notables of the end of the twelfth century. While John of 
Salisbury governed the bishopric of Chartres, the Frenchman, 
Peter of Blois, who all his life in vain sought a benefice in his 
native land, particularly in Chartres, was chancellor of the 



68 SOCIAL FRANCE 

arehbishoprie of Canterbury, and died as archdeacon of 
London. 

This internationalism of the student population surprised 
no one, and the ruling powers, even at Paris, found no espe- 
cial trouble with it, at least during the time of Philip 
Augustus. His father, Louis VII, had had to complain of 
the foreign students. According to a letter of John of Salis- 
bury, dated 1168, the German students at least verbally mani- 
fested the hostility they felt toward France and the king who 
showed them his hospitality. " They talk magniloquently, " 
he writes, '' and swell with menaces {minis tument).''^ He 
adds that they made fun of Louis YII " because he lived 
simply among his subjects, because he did not conduct him- 
self like a barbarian tyrant, and was not always seen sur- 
rounded by a guard like one who fears for his life {ut qui 
timet capiti suo).'" The same author states that the French 
government about that time expelled foreign students, but he 
speaks of the incident as entirely exceptional in hospitable 
France, " the most lovable and most civilized of all nations 
(omnium mitissima et civilissima nationum) ." 

Nothing like this occurred under the government of the 
victor of Bouvines. Still, between 1180 and 1223, there began 
in the principal academic centers that important transforma- 
tion, thanks to which these groups of masters and students 
became powerful corporations, capable of fighting successfully 
against all forces hostile to their development. Universitas 
magistrorum et scolarium; under this title appeared a new 
organism in ecclesiastical society. An understanding of the 
origin and the true nature of this ' ' university movement ' ' is 
desirable. 

To begin with, it is evident that the constituent elements 
of universities existed some time before the formation of the 
organizations themselves. The ' ' university ' ' was not created 
solely by the material fact that a corporate union or mutual- 
aid associations were established by masters and students; 
the moral bond, the similarity of feelingj of ideas, and of 
scientific method which unified a great part of the scholarly 
world, must also be taken into account. Certain it is that 
the school of Paris became conscious of itself and of its intel- 
lectual unity from the day on which a teacher, like Abelard, 



THE STUDENT 69 

managed to collect about him the youth of France and of 
Europe. In this sense the university of Paris existed from 
the second third of the twelfth century. 

From another point of view the great association called 
* ' university ' ' was itself only a collection of smaller academic 
associations. In the bosom of the general corporation there 
were lesser corporations: those which embraced the masters 
and scholars devoted to a special field of study, called " fac- 
ulties, ' ' after the middle of the thirteenth century ; and those 
which embraced the masters and scholars having the same 
native land, the '' nations." The general corporation, at 
least at Paris, appears to have been the resultant of two minor 
corporations — those of the masters and the scholars. The 
diflScult and obscure question in all this is precisely at what 
epoch the general corporation and the individual corporations 
were formed. The profound labors of certain savants have 
failed to dissipate the obscurities and penetrate the mystery. 
Father Denifle himself, the incontestable master of this field, 
could do no more than reach approximations. These academic 
institutions, like all other medieval institutions, were not 
created in a day by means of legislative statute, but by a 
series of consecutive creations and of a gradual process, the 
traces of which history has not preserved. Certain dated texts 
reveal for the first time the existence of the faculties, the 
nations, the universities, but there is nothing to prove that 
their organization was not earlier by some years than the 
document which mentions these. 

In France, only two academic associations had been named 
university at the time of Philip Augustus: those of Paris 
and Montpellier. 

As to Paris, it is in an act of 1215, issued by the cardinal, 
Robert of Courgon, that one encounters the first use of the 
words Universitas magistrorum et scolarium; and it is in a 
bull of Honorius III of 1221 that the matter of a seal, which 
the masters and scholars of Paris have ' ' recently ' ' had made 
for the use of their corporation, is discussed. But many 
previous acts show us the masters and scholars acting like an 
organized body. At any rate, the association of teachers ap- 
pears in an act of Innocent III of 1208-1209, and that of 
the scholars in an episcopal act of 1207. Unquestionably, 



70 SOCIAL FEANCE 

furthermore, the general corporation already had its chief or 
director {capitate) in 1200, the year in which it received its 
first-known privilege from the king of France, for in that 
famous charter Philip Augustus very evidently includes the 
whole personnel of the great Parisian school, both masters 
and students, under the term scolares. Likewise, all that one 
can say of the origin of the faculties is that they begin to be 
mentioned with their chiefs or " managers " after 1219. As 
for the '' nations," which appear for the first time in 1222, 
Father Denifle believes that they were formed after the facul- 
ties and later than 1215. The opinion of such an erudite has 
great weight ; but it is only conjecture. Light fails here ; one 
must resign himself to darkness. 

The actual university of Montpellier, as far as the union 
of its faculties goes, was not officially named and organized 
until it was done iu 1289 by a bull of Nicholas IV. But 
the faculty of medicine, at least, was an organized body after 
1220, and already called itself " university " in a restricted 
sense. The statute of Cardinal Conrad of Porto, which 
organized it or sanctioned its organization, is the oldest act 
creating a French faculty. In it one can clearly see of what 
the original bond between the members of the association 
consisted. 

To begin with, it was placed under a special jurisdiction, at 
least in civil matters; and the special judge was one of the 
teachers named by the bishop of Maguelonne. He sat together 
with three, other professors (among whom was the oldest in 
service), but as a court of first instance only. Appeal could 
be taken from his decisions to the bishop, who, be it added, 
kept entire control of criminal justice. Besides this civil 
judge, " who can be called the chancellor of the university, 
cancellarius universitatis scolarium," there was room for an- 
other high office, that of the oldest professor. He should 
enjoy certain privileges of honor: he should have the power 
of fixing the time and length of academic vacations. Here 
is seen dawning the authority of the head of the faculty, 
whom later texts call the " dean." 

The corporation of Montpellier, then, had its officials and, 
in part, its own jurisdiction. Another article of the statute 
of 1220 puts its character as a mutual aid association against 



THE STUDENT 71 

outsiders beyond all doubt : " If a master is attacked directly 
or through one of his adherents by one who is not of the 
school, all other masters and scholars, summoned for the pur- 
pose, shall bring him counsel and aid." Relations of close 
fellowship could be expected to arise between members of 
the teaching staff: " If a professor is in litigation with one 
of his pupils about his pay, or for any other reason, no other 
professor shall kaowingly accept the student before the latter 
has given or promised satisfaction to his former master." 
Professors are forbidden to engage in unfriendly competi- 
tion: " Let no master attract the disciple of another master 
by means of solicitation, gift, or any other means whatsoever, 
for the purpose of winning him away." A final clause, in 
effect, proves that there was indeed a sort of fraternity: 
" Masters and students shall punctually attend the funerals 
of members of the university." 

The university was a brotherhood almost entirely composed 
of clerics ; masters and students had the tonsure ; collectively, 
they constituted a church institution. To say that the cre- 
ation of universities was one of the characteristic signs of the 
em.ancipation of the mind in the religious domain, and 
that the " university movement " had as its principal object 
the replacing of the clerical schools of chapters and abbeys 
by corporations imbued with the lay spirit, is a gross error. 
Universities were ecclesiastical associations and were organ- 
ized accordingly. The first act emanating from the uni- 
versity of Paris (1221) is a letter addressed to the monks of 
the order of Saint Dominic, recently established in the city. 
The members of the university, as brothers of the Dominicans, 
desired to participate in the benefits of their spiritual works ; 
they sought the favor of being interred in their church or 
cloister with the same funeral honors as were reserved for 
members of the congregation. To convince oneself of the 
religious character of these academic associations, a glance 
ai the seal of the university of Paris is quite enough.^ It 
is divided into several sections. In the niche above, 

^ The oldest specimen of this seal we possess dates from 1292 (Arch, 
nat., K. 964). Cf. Douet d'Areq, Invent, des sceaux des Arch, nat., 
No. 8015. Admitting that the original seal was not entirely similar, 
it must at least have had as religious a character. 



72 SOCIAL FRANCE 

which is the largest and the place of honor, appears the 
Virgin, Our Lady, patron of universities and of the church 
in which the great school of Paris was born. To the left is 
the bishop of Paris, bearing his crozier; to the right, a saint 
encompassed by a cloud. These are important personages. 
In the lower frames, which are very small, teachers and schol- 
ars appear. The whole is dominated by the cross. How could 
this fraternity, dedicated to the Virgin and composed of 
clerics and monks, signify the lay element and independence 
of thought? 

Still, it is true that the university was born of an effort 
for independence; but, as far as the academic associations 
were concerned, the point at issue was escaping from the local 
ecclesiastical power, only to submit exclusively to the domina- 
tion of the central power of Christendom ; that is, to the pope. 
No more than the great schools of the preceding age did the 
universities cease to be ecclesiastical institutions; but they 
did cease to be diocesan institutions under the control of the 
bishop or his chancellor. They became an instrument of 
power in the hands of Rome, which meant a weakening of the 
episcopacy and the strengthening of the Holy See. It was 
the popes who created or developed these university corpora- 
tions when they wished to take possession of the institutions 
of higher instruction. And it is easy to understand why they 
wished to do this. In the hands of bishops, chapters, chan- 
cellors, and doctors, the right of granting permission to teach 
was regarded and practised as a source of profit. In many a 
bishopric the high ^nd noble calling of the professorship found 
itself subjected to oppressive formalities, restrictions, or even 
tyrannical conditions, which paralyzed and perverted its func- 
tions. Venality kept pace with intolerance: the permit to 
teach, the " license," was sold; it was granted or refused 
without any system, according to the caprice and interests of 
a body of canons or a diocesan dignitary. A reform move- 
ment arose; the papacy undertook to carry it through, nat- 
urally, for its own profit. The work was delicate, for, though 
favoring the development of the universities, the popes were 
bound to treat the bishops with caution and not shake tradi- 
tion too rudely. How their diplomacy managed to gain 
ground and attain its object is well known. 



THE STUDENT 73 

The history of the origin of French universities is, in 
this sense, nothing more than a phase of that larger evolu- 
tion which from the beginning of the middle ages tended to 
exalt the papal monarchy above local ecclesiastical authorities. 
It would have been surprising had the supremacy of Rome 
not sought to establish itself in a domain so important as 
public instruction. In this field there was something worth 
conquering, and the conquest was brought about by a close 
alliance of the papacy with academic organisms. From the 
standpoint of the higher interests of instruction and knowl- 
edge, it was not regrettable. 



Beginning with the reign of Philip Augustus, the uni- 
versity of Paris played a considerable role in French society 
and was an institution admired by the whole of Europe. In 
1169, a king of England had already spoken of it as a moral 
power, the opinion and decision of which ought to be law. 
In his struggle with Archbishop Thomas a Becket, Henry II, 
the founder of the Plantagenet Empire, declared himself will- 
ing to accept the arbitration either of the king's court in 
France, of the French clergy, or of the " school of Paris." 
At the time when Philip Augustus succeeded his father, the 
abbot of Bonne-Esperance, Philip of Harvengt, wrote to 
felicitate several of his friends on being able to study in Paris, 
" the city of letters." " Happy city," he adds, " where the 
students are so numerous that their multitude almost sur- 
passes that of the lay inhabitants." 

In a letter which must have been written shortly before 
1190, Guy of Basoches, a cleric from Champagne, wrote a 
dithyrambic eulogy of Paris, the royal city where he lived, 
of all the most attractive. 

" The Grand pont is at the center of things ; it is surrounded with 
merchandise, merchants, and boats. The Petit pont belongs to the 
dialecticians {logicis) who cross or walk upon it while debating. 
In the He (the Cite), alongside the palace of the kings which com- 
mands the whole city, stands the hall of philosophy, where study 
reigns as sole sovereign, a citadel of light and of immortality. That 
He is the eternal home of seven sisters, the liberal arts; it is there 
also that decrees and laws resound from a trumpet of most noble 



74 SOCIAL FRANCE 

eloquence; there, finally, bubbles the fountain of religious learning, 
from which flow the three linapid brooks which water the prairies 
of intelligence {prata mentium), that is theology under her triple 
form of history, allegory, and morality." 

This high-flown testimony of Guy of Basoches is important 
for its age alone ; but also because it shows the place where 
the schools were located and what three classes of instruction 
they gave : the arts, canon and civil law, and theology. There 
is no mention of medical teaching, which, without doubt, was 
as yet restricted and unnoticed. But from the time of Philip 
Augustus medicine was taught. The proof of this is found 
in a panegyric on the university of Paris, which the historian, 
William of Armorica, included in a passage of his chronicle 
under the year 1210. 

" In that time letters flourished at Paris. Never before in any 
time or in any part of the world, whether in Athens or in Egypt, 
had there been such a multitude of students. The reason for this 
must be sought not only in the admirable beauty of Paris, but also 
in the special privileges which King Philip and his father before 
him conferred upon the scholars. In that great city the study of 
the trivium and the quadrivium, of canon and civil law, as also of 
the science which empowers one to preserve the health of the body 
and cure its ills, were held in high esteem. But the crowd pressed 
with a special zeal about the chairs where Holy Scripture was taught, 
or where problenas of theology were solved." 

Theologians, decretists, " artists," professors, and students 
formed this multitude of scolares Parisienses, who appeared 
in the first ranks in all solemnities of the reign of Philip 
Augustus, They were seen, in 1191, taking their place in 
the grand procession which the Parisian clergy organized to 
procure from Heaven the healing of Prince Louis, the sole 
heir to the crown. After the battle of Bouvines, in 1214, they 
took a prominent part in the popular rejoicings and proved 
their attachment to the dynasty by feasting and dancing in- 
cessantly for seven days and seven nights. 

The reputation of the imiversity of Paris was so firmly 
established that in 1205 the first Latin Emperor of Con- 
stantinople, Baldwin of Flanders, prayed the pope to use all 
his efforts to induce some of the masters of Paris to come 
and reform the educational conditions of the Empire. Inno- 



THE STUDENT 75 

cent III wrote to the university (universis magistris et scola- 
ribus Parisiensihus) , to make clear how important it was that 
this Greek church, which after a long separation had finally 
been reunited to the Latin Church, should have the benefit 
of their ardor and knowledge. Putting before them the most 
alluring prospects, he even invited them to migrate to the 
Orient en masse {plerosque vestrum). Greece, let it be known, 
is a true Paradise, " a land filled with silver, gold, and 
precious stones, where wine, grain, and oil abound, ' ' In spite 
of these inducements, the doctors of Paris do not appear to 
have left the Petit pont and the Cite in great numbers to go 
and ' ' read ' ' on the Bosphorus. Twelve years later Honorius 
III again addressed an invitation of the same kind to them; 
but this time they were to go a shorter distance, to Languedoc, 
there to sow sound doctrine in a soil moistened by the blood 
of the Albigenses. 

The church was proud of this great school, an immense 
seminary where France and Europe supplied their needs. 
Nevertheless, a certain group of ecclesiastics, austere or dis- 
contented spirits, did not join in the general enthusiasm. 
Seeing above all else the dangers of this enormous agglomera- 
tion of clerics in one center, they denounced the abuse of 
knowledge and the perils which faith encountered in the midst 
of this cosmopolitan youth, burning to know and discuss 
everything. Between 1192 and 1203, Stephen of Toumai 
called the pope's attention to " the malady which has little 
by little slipped into the university body " and which -^111 
become incurable if a remedy is not quickly administered. 

The first symptom of illness, according to him, is the aban- 
donment of the old theology. Students applaud only those 
who bring them something new (solis novitatiius applaudunt) , 
and the professors aim rather to advertise themselves by this 
means than to stand by the true tradition. ' ' All their efforts 
tend to please, to retain, and to mislead their auditors." And 
the censor rises up against that pitiless dialectic which whets 
itself upon the dogmas and the most sacred mysteries of 
religion. 

"Babblers of flesh and bone (verbosa caro) irreverently discuss 
spiritual things, the essence of God, the incarnation of the Word! 



76 SOCIAL FRANCE 

In the erossways one hears these subtle logicians divide the In- 
visible Trinity! There are as many errors as there are teachers, 
as many scandals as there are hearers, as many blasphemies as there 
are public squares." 

This conservative, for the sake of his cause, appreciably 
overstates things, but the expressions he employs are inter- 
esting. Together with other evidence, they prove that the 
teachers of the time were not lodged in palaces. There were 
not even always university sites. The masters held their lec- 
tures in their own homes, before pupils seated on the ground, 
or, in the winter, upon straw. As houses were small, those 
who desired a large audience held their school in the open air, 
in their own narrow confines, in the erossways, or in the pub- 
lic squares. 

Stephen of Tournai is especially indignant over what hap- 
pens in the teaching of the liberal arts. Some of the masters 
are entirely too young. 

" These well-primped adolescents have the impudence to occupy 
masters' chairs; they have no down upon their chins, yet behold 
them in the positions of mature men. They write manuals too, 
summas, poorly digested compilations freshened but not made taste- 
ful by the salt of philosophy." 

The conclusion of the complaint is that all these abuses 
must needs be corrected by the pope. This irregular and 
disjointed organization should be subjected to fixed rules 
and to a respect for tradition. 

"It is not fitting that things Divine be thus demeaned and made 
vulgar playthings. It is not meet that almost anybody may be 
heard shouting at the street corner : ' Here is Christ, He dwells 
with me ! ' Let not religion be east as food unto dogs and as pearls 
before swine." 

Many contemporary preachers were of the same opinion. 
Alain of Lille compares the university men who engage in 
incessant refining in logic to " talking frogs." Geoffrey of 
Troyes treats the grammarians and their scholars as beasts 
of burden or asses: jumenta sunt vel asini. Absalon, abbot 
of Saint- Victor, openly attacks those who occupy themselves 
with other things than seeking to understand man and God. 



THE STUDENT 77 

" Our scholars, puffed up with a vain philosophy, are happy when, 
by force of subtlety, they have come upon some discovery! They 
do not accept the shape of the globe, the property of the elements, 
the beginning and the end of the seasons, the force of the wind, 
the bushes or their roots! Here is the object of their studies: they 
believe that they will find the reason of things. But the supreme 
cause, the object and the principle of everything, they only see with 
blear eyes if at all. 0, ye, who would know, begin not with the 
sky, but with yourselves; see what ye are, what ye should be and 
what ye shall be. Of what use is it to discuss the ideas of Plato, 
to read and re-read Scipio's Dream? What good is there in all 
these inextricable arguments which are the fashion and in that craze 
for logical subtleties in which many have found their destruction ? " 

A condemnation of science is here pronounced by the abbot 
of Saint- Victor ; happily, that monk's was a voice in the 
desert, and the human mind, come v^hat might, pursued its 
onward march. Many clerics, without being hostile to the 
part taken by the scientific movement and without wishing 
to subject all knowledge and instruction to theology, still 
made some reservations, criticised certain tendencies and cer- 
tain deeds as contrary to the organization, as well as to the 
spirit, of the church. 

In the study of those liberal arts which were comprised 
in the trivium, the masters and scholars were strongly drawn 
to profane literature, especially to Latin poetry. They aban- 
doned everything else to read and write Latin verse. They 
composed songs, tales, odes, comedies, often in a most frivolous 
vein, a circumstance to be explained by the general coarseness 
of manners and by the naive enthusiasm of the clerics, who, 
in olden days, admired everything indiscriminately. Many 
were the lettered prelates who made their first public appear- 
ance through playful poems, modeled on Ovid or other erotic 
poets — sins of youth which ripe age expiated by edifying 
productions. The severest critics, Stephen of Tournai and 
Peter of Blois, in this respect had none too clean consciences. 
A brother of Peter of Blois, "William, who was a benedictine 
abbot, wrote a Latin comedy, Alda, the conclusion of which 
would not bear translation. A sort of sensual idolatry of 
paganism is what the study of the humanities led to in the 
case of many clerics. As for the quadrivium, the sciences 
properly speaking, since they were less attractive in them- 



78 SOCIAL FRANCE 

selves and brought only a meager return, the mass of students 
neglected or abandoned them entirely. 

The utilitarian spirit was developing among them. To 
obtain a prebend, a prelacy, it was enough, in a pinch, to have 
studied the liberal arts. After the quadrivium, the student 
left the school provided with a benefice. Either he surren- 
dered it to study theology or returned to it after a longer 
or shorter absence, depending upon his inclinations, mean- 
time escaping the burden of a canon's or cure's life. A 
student who was not content with his elementary course had the 
choice between the branches of higher instruction — medicine, 
canon law, civil law, or theology; but, a practical man, he 
picked the most lucrative. With civil law he might become 
a judge and administrator in the courts of the lay lords ; with 
canon law he was fitted for the same functions under a church 
lord. Medicine was already becoming a paying profession. 
Theology it was which suffered from this new spirit; but 
those who controlled the clergy and wished to maintain things 
in their traditional condition could not allow it to be sacri- 
ficed. Theologj, the science par excellence, the final aim of 
all teaching, must be protected against the utilitarians; and, 
indeed, every effort was made to fetter this vexatious tend- 
ency and preserve to the university of Paris its character 
as the international center of theological studies. At the 
beginning of the thirteenth century, Prevostin, a chancellor 
of Notre-Dame, in a sermon, severely blamed the young 
clerics who abandoned the Holy Scriptures to devote them- 
selves to civil law. And we shall see the papacy prohibiting 
the study of that law. 

The university of Paris gave an opening to its adversaries 
in other respects. It is evident that, in a great city like 
Paris, the presence of so great a number of clerics, assembled 
from all parts of Prance and Europe, introduced certain dan- 
gers to public order and morality, especially to the morality 
of churchmen. There were present not only young people 
who were working for a degree in order to obtain benefices 
and dignities ; the university also attracted a crowd of monks, 
canons, and cures, who, under the pretext of completing their 
education with the masters in vogue, were delighted to leave 
their abbeys, chapters, or parishioners. Popes and councils 



THE STUDENT 79 

vainly strove to stem this pressure of clerics toward the ' ' city 
of letters," to bring them back to the observance of their 
professional duties. For the defenders of the ancient disci- 
pline it was a great scandal. 

Many of these cosmopolitan students belonged to the class 
of poor itinerant clerics, vagi scolares, who to earn their bread 
engaged in any trade whatsoever. Debauchees, frequenters of 
taverns, and knaves — ^the " goliards," as they were then 
called, swelled the number of minstrels, composed Latin 
verses of a satiric or bacchic vein, or wrote the most licentious 
stories in French. A certain number of our fabliaux are the 
work of errant clerics, accustomed to live on expedients and 
alms. They are depicted in the story of the Povre clerc, the 
hero of which, a student without hearth or home, seeks his 
livelihood at the hand of public charity. 



"He had studied at Paris so long that he found it expedient to 
leave the city because of poverty. There was nothing more to 
pawn, nothing more to sell. He saw perfectly well that he could 
stay in the Cite no longer: evil had been the days he spent there. 
As he no longer saw whither to betake himself, it seemed better to 
abandon his studies. He set out for his native land, for which his 
heart yearned: but of money he had not a bit, which much dis- 
tressed him. The day on which he departed he had nothing to 
eat or drink. In a town upon which he came he entered the home 
of a peasant and found there only the landlady and a servant: 
' Dame,' said he, ' I come from the school ; I have journeyed far 
this day. Be kind to me, and lodge me without more ado.' " 



And he was lodged; but, as always, it was the master of the 
house who bore the costs of this hospitality. Mischievous and 
roguish, always ready to tease the burghers and seduce the 
burgesses: that is the scholar-cleric of literature as well as 
of reality. 

A contemporary of Philip Augustus, the Italian teacher, 
Buoncompagno, writing his as yet unpublished Antiqua 
Bhetorica about 1215, gives a description — somewhat indefi- 
nite, to be sure — of the wretched students of Bologna. The 
life they led must have resembled very closely that of their 
unfortunate Parisian companions. 

' ' I ought to spend my time in following courses and study- 



80 SOCIAL FRANCE 

ing, ' ' writes one of these poor devils, ' ' but want compels me 
to go begging to the doors of churchmen." 

" I am reduced to crying twenty times in succession : * Charity, 
my good seigniors ! ' and generally to hear the response : ' God be 
•with you.' I betake myself to the houses of laymen where I am 
rudely repulsed, and if perchance some one says to me, ' Wait a mo- 
ment,' I receive a bit of disgusting bread, which the dogs would not 
have. Professional beggars, oftener than I, get the bad vegetables 
and the skin and sinews that one cannot eat, the offal that is thrown 
away, the damaged wine. At night I course about the city, stick 
in one hand and wallet and flask in the other: the stick to protect 
me against the dogs, the wallet to collect the leavings of fish, bread, 
and vegetables, and the flask for water. Often it happens that I 
fall into the mire, that mire of Bologna which smells like a corpse, 
and thus all besmirched I return home to satisfy a growling stomach 
with the leavings that have been thrown me." 

The existence of these wretches, a menace to public security, 
presently stirred up the church. Soon began that series of 
councils which thimdered against these loose-lived clerics, 
these goliards, and prohibited them to wear the tonsure ; that 
is, to claim ecclesiastical privilege. But, beginning with the 
reign of Philip Augustus, private charity endeavored to found 
institutions of refuge to supply these poor students with food 
and shelter. This is the humble origin of the " colleges,'* 
of those endowed establishments, with which the left bank 
of the Seine was little by little to be covered. Having become 
centers of instruction, they presently came to constitute the 
university itself. 

The beginning of these establishments was made in a char- 
itable grant of 1180, in which a burgher of London named 
Josce, returning from Jerusalem, bought a hall in the Hotel- 
Dieu of Paris and provided an income which permitted 
eighteen clerical scholars to eat and sleep there. In return, 
they undertook to watch over the dead of the hospital by turns 
and to carry the cross and Holy-water at burials. At a later 
date they were to move from the Hotel-Dieu and to have a 
house of their own. Thus was established the oldest of the 
Parisian colleges, that of the Dix-huit. A pattern had been 
given: other colleges would be established, such as that of 
Saint-Honore, founded in 1209 by the widow of Stephen 



THE STUDENT 81 

Berot for thirteen poor scholars. Even at that time another 
house of refuge for students, Saint-Thomas du Louvre, was 
in full operation, for in 1210 its officials requested permission 
of Innocent III to build a chapel and to have a cemetery of 
their own. 

In the university of Paris there was an element making for 
immorality and disorder that was difficult to suppress in the 
lay domestics (servientes) , attached to the service of students. 
These, too, in a certain measure, shared the privileges of their 
masters. This serving class to a large extent consisted of 
rascals who victimized even the students. The Dominican, 
Stephen of Bourbon, recalling his youth, part of which he 
spent as a student at Paris in the later years of Philip Augus- 
tus, frankly states that the gargons of the scholars " were 
nearly all thieves." When these servants went to market or 
to the retailers for their masters, they managed to make ' ' as 
high as seventy -five and even four hundred per cent." on 
their purchases. 

Under these conditions the frequent appeals of the student 
to the paternal purse is intelligible. The greater part of 
students' letters preserved in the formularies of the twelfth 
and thirteenth centuries have this as their burden. From M. 
Leopold Delisle I borrow the translation of a missive sent by 
two students of Orleans to their family in the last years of the 
twelfth century. One would wager that it came from the 
Latin Quarter yesterday. 

" To our Dear and Revered Parents, Greeting and Filial Obedience. 
May you be pleased to learn that, thanks to God, we continue in 
good health in the city of Orleans and that we devote ourselves 
entirely to study, bearing in mind what Cato has said : ' It is glorious 
to know something.' We live in a good, stylish house, separated from 
the schools and market by only a single buUding, and we can 
therefore attend our daily courses without wetting our feet. We 
also have some good friends who are well advanced and thoroughly 
desirable in every way. We heartily congratulate ourselves upon 
it, for the Psalmist has said : cum sancto sanctus eris [" With 
the pure thou wilt shew thyself pure"]. But because the lack 
of equipment hinders the achievement of the aims we have 
in view, we believed we ought to appeal to your parental love and 
to ask you to have the goodness to send enough money by the bearer 
to buy some parchment, ink, and ink-stand and such other things 
as we need. You will not leave us in embarrassment, and will 



82 SOCIAL FRANCE 

insist that we finish our studies properly, so as to be able to return 
to our country with honor. The bearer will also take charge of the 
shoes and hose which you may have to send us. You can also send us 
news of yourselves by the same means." ^ 

Certain persons did not always distinguish between the 
good students, the bad ones, and the cosmopolitan crowd of 
valets which exploited the youth. The preachers of the time 
of Philip Augustus were not gentle with the Parisian scholars. 
To be sure, this was especially the case with the chancellors 
of Notre-Dame, born enemies of the university. Peter 
Comestor reproaches them with being too fond of wine and 
good cheer: 

"In eating and drinking, there are not their equals; they are 
devourers at table, but not devout at mass. At work they yawn; at 
banquet they stand ia awe of no one. They abhor meditation upon 
the divine books, but they love to see the wine sparkling in their 
glasses and they gulp it down intrepidly." 

In this matter the professors themselves did not always set a 
good example. Peter of Blois, in one of his letters, sharply 
lectures a master of arts who, he says, has changed " from a 
dialectician of the highest power to an accomplished drinker 
(egregium potatorem) ,^ ' and, heaping up quotations of the 
Holy Scriptures, he attempts to turn him from his insobriety. 
Peter of Poitiers, another chancellor, insists especially on the 
depravity of manners: 

" What a shame ! Our scholars live in baseness which not one 
of them would even dare to mention ia his home among his relatives. 
They waste the riches of the Crucified with courtesans. Their con- 
duct, aside from shaming the church, is an ignominy to the masters 
and students, a scandal to the laity, a dishonor to the nation, and 
an injury to the Creator Himself." 

Chancellor Prevostin of Cremona is more specific in his 
complaints. He described the scholars, completely armed, 
coursing about the streets of Paris at night, breaking in the 

^ L. Delisle, Annuaire-hulletin de la Soci^te de I'histoire de France 
(1869), Vol. 7, p. 149. Cf. the numerous examples of requests for 
money given by Haskins, The life of mediceval students as illustrated by 
their letters, in The American Historical Review, Vol. Ill, 1898, No. 2. 



THE STUDENT 83 

doors of the bourgeoisie, and filling the courts with the bruit 
of their escapades. " Every day public women (meretriculae) 
come to depose against them, complaining of having been 
beaten, of having had their garments cut into shreds, or their 
hair cut off." 

A turbulent and combative spirit, indeed! but such was 
the university. One preacher compares the professors, in 
their scholastic quarrels, to cocks, ever ready to fight. The 
students imitated their masters, save that they quickly came 
to blows. From an unpublished sermon, Haureau ^ has ex- 
tracted the following utterance of Philip Augustus when the 
fighting scholars were mentioned in his presence: '' They 
are hardier than knights," said the king; " knights, covered 
with their armor, hesitate to engage in battle. These clerics, 
who have neither hauberk nor helmet but a tonsured head, 
playfully fall upon one another with daggers : decidedly fool- 
ish of them, and very dangerous." 



The external history of the university of Paris, to all 
effects, begins with a battle. In 1192, the scholars fell into 
a quarrel with some peasants attached to the abbey of Saint- 
Germain-des-Pres. These occupied the vaguely defined dis- 
trict which stretched away to the south and west of the 
monastery — either the Petit Pre-aux-Clercs, now bounded by 
the Rues Jacob, Bonaparte, Seine, and Beaux-Arts, or more 
likely the Grand Pre-aux-Clercs, which began at the Rue Saint- 
Benoit. This large property to which the scholars went for 
their diversion was the source of interminable wrangling be- 
tween the abbey and the university. In the fray of 1192, a 
student was killed. The murder of a cleric by laymen, to 
say nothing of their being serfs, could not go unpunished. 
The students entered a complaint at Rome. The abbot of 
Saint-Germain-des-Pres, seriously compromised, had to prove 
his innocence before the archbishop of Reims and the assem- 
bled university and destroy the cottages of the murderers, 
who had taken flight. This reparation perfectly satisfied the 
court of Rome. Stephen of Tournai had some difficulty in 

^ Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibl. nationale, VI, p. 250. 



84 SOCIAL FEANCE 

proving to Cardinal Octavian, the pope's legate, that the 
abbot was not implicated. 

This pope was Celestine III, author of the first grant pos- 
sessed by the university of Paris. By a bull addressed to 
the bishop of Paris some time between 1191 and 1198, he 
provided that all clerics living in the great city should have 
the right of bringing their civil cases before the jurisdiction 
of the church. He reminds him that the clergy has its special 
judges and cannot be subject to ordinary legislation. The 
word scolares does not appear in the bull; it concerns only 
clerics. But the reason for, and the importance of, the 
pontifical concession are evidently to be sought in the enor- 
mous number of clerics whom the schools of Paris attracted. 

In 1200, there was a second milestone in the history of 
the university in the form of another battle. This time it 
was a rupture between the students and the citizens of Paris, 
supported by the provost of the king ; that is, by the police. 

At the time there was among the students a cleric from 
a powerful German family who had been proposed for the 
bishopric of Liege. His servant, having gone to a tavern 
to purchase some wine, fell into a quarrel with the trades- 
man, was struck, and his jug was broken. Furious, the Ger- 
man students took the part of their compatriot. They invaded 
the shop and left its keeper half-dead. Great was the excite- 
ment among the Parisians ; it was without doubt not the first 
time they had had a grievance against the scholars. Thomas, 
provost of Philip Augustus, followed by armed citizens, en- 
tered the quarters of the German clerics to arrest the culprits. 
These resisted; the police, as often happens, had a heavy 
hand, and five university men, of whom several were clerics, 
were killed. Immediately masters and students lodged a 
complaint with the king: they would suspend their lectures 
and would quit Paris unless the murderers were punished. 

A professors' strike; a suspension of lectures! even to-day 
this would mean serious inconvenience. At the time of Philip 
Augustus it was considered a public calamity; indeed, almost 
an offense against religion. The importance of the university 
of Paris for the recruitment of the clergy was such that 
a suspension of instruction meant a brusque check of the 
ecclesiastical life of Europe. The king of France did every- 



THE STUDENT 85 

thing that was required of him. The provost of Paris was 
thrown into prison together with all his accomplices who 
could be found. Some of the murderers having fled, Philip 
had their houses demolished and their vines grubbed up. 
Some time later the scholars prayed the king to set at liberty 
the provost and the others condemned to life imprisonment 
on the condition that the guilty persons be delivered to them. 
They were to be scourged in one of the schools, after which 
they would be considered free from all blame for their crime. 
But Philip Augustus refused, saying that it was matter of 
honor with him not to have king's men chastised by others 
than the king. The provost remained in the royal prison for 
a long time. Finally he attempted to escape over the wall 
by means of a rope, but the cord broke and he fell from such 
a height as to be killed. 

An important object of the collegians was to secure from 
the lay authorities the recognition of their position as privi- 
leged clerics, subject only to the tribunals of their order and 
hence no longer subject to the jurisdiction of the king's 
police. The celebrated charter which Philip Augustus 
granted in 1200 completely satisfied them. The provost of 
Paris could lay his hands on a scholar only in case of a 
flagrant offense; and then he must arrest him without mal- 
treatment, at least if the culprit offered no resistance. And 
he could arrest him only to turn him over immediately to 
ecclesiastical justice. If the judges were not accessible at 
the time of the arrest, the delinquent was to be kept at the 
house of some fellow-student until he could be surrendered. 
The chief or director of the university {capitale Farisien- 
sium scolarium) could not be arrested on any pretext what- 
ever by the king's agents: the judges of the church alone had 
the right to put him under arrest. Even the servants or the 
lay domestics of the scholars had their privileges ! The king's 
men could lay hands on them only in case of an evident 
offense. But it was also desirable that the students be pro- 
tected against the ill-will of the citizens of Paris. These 
should take an oath that, if they encountered a scholar mis- 
treated by a layman, they would not hesitate to testify to 
that effect before the judges. If a scholar were attacked with 
weapons, clubs, or stones, the laics who were witnesses of the 



86 SOCIAL FRANCE 

oeeurrenee were expected to seize the assailant and deliver 
him to the royal police. And, finally, the provost in office 
and the citizens of Paris should in the presence of the uni- 
versity swear to observe the clauses of this act in good faith. 
Thereafter each provost, upon assuming office, should take 
the same oath. 

This is the famous ordinance not improperly regarded as 
the charter establishing the liberties of the university. It 
was a considerable grant, since it withdrew the university 
from civil jurisdiction, declared it unassailable and inviolable 
by the king's agents, and subjected it to those church judges 
so indulgent to the clergy. It assured the independence, and 
consequently the prosperity, of the great international cor- 
poration for centuries; but, in guaranteeing the scholars al- 
most complete impunity, it had as a natural consequence the 
innumerable students' frays of later times. However, the 
charter of Philip Augustus was not, as has sometimes been 
averred, a decree constituting the university; it contained 
no provision for such an organization. In it the university 
appears as a body already formed and even provided with a 
head, the capitate. Who is this head? Is he of the faculty 
of arts, the " rector," who toward the end of the thirteenth 
century became the representative of the whole university? 
There is no good reason for saying so. Let us agree, then, 
that, in making the masters and scholars exclusively subject 
to ecclesiastical tribunals, Philip Augustus was introducing 
no innovations. He simply sanctioned the measures taken 
some years previously by Pope Celestine III, the identification 
of all students with the clergy. 

Were all students clerics? The question was considered 
in 1208 when Innocent Ill's legate. Cardinal Gualo, imposed 
a reform measure on the clergy of the diocese of Paris, aimed 
to correct their conduct. The severest penalties were fixed 
for clerics who did not have the tonsure and garb of their 
order, who sold the sacraments, went into business, or lived 
with women. Should one be equally rigorous with the mas- 
ters and students of the university? The cardinal believed 
it would be difficult, for he felt himself obliged to close his 
decree with a paragraph intended solely for the academic 
group. Delinquent scholars should not, like other clerics, 



THE STUDENT 87 

be liable to immediate excommunication. The professors 
should first warn them collectively, and threaten them with 
anathema. If they persisted in their fault, the university 
should in full assembly pronounce a new summons, this time 
naming each individually. In the event of a prolonged re- 
sistance, they should be denounced before the chancellor of 
Notre-Dame as excommunicates, and regarded as such until 
they had given satisfaction to the bishop or, in his absence, 
to the abbot of Saint- Victor. 

It was the papacy which subjected the scholars to these 
disciplinary rules: it was acting as sovereign with this, a 
privileged corporation. In 1207, Innocent III, finding the 
number of teachers of theology too large, had on his own 
authority reduced it to eight. Two years later he authorized 
the university to reform itself. Certain young doctors of 
arts had freely violated the accepted usages. They were re- 
proached with having an improper deportment, with violat- 
ing the traditional procedure in lectures and discussions, and 
with entirely neglecting the obligatory attendance at the 
obsequies of their confreres. The corporation had elected 
eight deputies to draw up a rule applicable to all masters. 
A single one of these refused to submit and to take the oath. 
He was expelled from the corps of professors. After a time 
he submitted to making honorable amends, and asked for his 
rehabilitation. But a bull of Innocent III (1208-1209) was 
necessary to permit him to reenter the university faculty. 

Prom this intervention of the papacy in the petty affairs 
of university life one can imagine the role it assumed in 
important matters. Rome was the constant protectress, to 
whom masters and students appealed at once when the moral 
or material interests of the corporation were imperiled. 

In 1210, the university of Paris experienced a grave crisis. 
What mistrustful spirits and the adversaries of scientific 
progress had foreseen came to pass: heresy once again crept 
into the instruction given under the shadow of the cloister 
of Notre-Dame. A master of arts and theologian, Amauri of 
Bene, or of Chartres, openly taught that every Christian was 
a member of Christ, and therefore a part of divinity, and he 
pushed his pantheism to its extreme consequences. The other 
theologians, faithful to orthodoxy, were aroused. Amauri, 



88 SOCIAL FRANCE 

attacked and condemned by all his colleagues, was compelled 
to make an explanation before the pope, with whom the uni- 
versity had registered a complaint. Innocent, after having 
heard a statement of his doctrines and the opposing opinions 
upheld by the delegates of the university, in his turn dis- 
approved of the heretic. The latter returned to Paris and 
was there compelled to abjure his theories before the whole 
university constituency. Sick with chagrin and humiliation, 
he died shortly afterwards, to all appearances reconciled 
with the church. His opinions lived after him. 

The pantheism of Amauri, propagated and even extended 
by his disciples, gave birth to a new cult, that of the Holy 
Spirit : the Old Testament had been supplanted by the New ; 
but the latter, too, had performed its service, and the reign 
of the Spirit was now to begin. Each Christian being an 
incarnation of Holy Spirit, a particle of G-od, sacraments be- 
came useless; the grace of the Spirit was enough to save 
all the world. This doctrine, issuing from theological teach- 
ing, born in the university, had university men as its apostles 
and martyrs. A skilful manoeuver of the bishop of Paris 
and of friar Guerin, chancellor of Philip Augustus, discov- 
ered the sectarians. Nearly all of them were teachers or 
students of theology, deacons or priests. One of them, David 
of Dinant, who had published a manual of doctrine, fled 
betimes. A considerable number of others was arrested and 
arraigned before the council of Paris under the presidency 
of Peter of Corbeil, archbishop of Sens. 

The text of the decision rendered by the council in 1210 still 
exists. It was decreed that the body of Amauri, father of 
the heresy, should be exhumed and cast outside of the ceme- 
tery, and his memory excommunicated in every parish of 
the province. Some of the arrested sectarians were degraded 
and delivered to the secular power; some ten of them suf- 
fered death by fire in the meadow of Champeaux on the 
twentieth of December ; the rest were condemned to perpetual 
imprisonment. Only women and persons of low estate, simple 
souls whose only fault lay in having yielded to the theolo- 
gians, were spared. The chastisement extended to books. The 
manuscripts of David of Dinant were publicly burned. Even 
Aristotle suffered from the incident. His natural philosophy 



THE STUDENT 89 

and Averroes' commentary upon it were forbidden to be 
studied in the university, under pain of excommunication. 
Finally, the council declared all to be heretics in whose homes 
were found French translations of the Credo and the Pater 
noster. 

This episode was something of a disaster and a rude warn- 
ing to the incipient university. In the middle ages the lib- 
erty of the professoriate, so highly extolled by the popes, did 
not give the liberty of teaching anything whatsoever; it 
halted at the bounds of orthodoxy. Schools could be opened 
and things sacred could be discussed with a large freedom; 
but dogma must never be publicly treated! Intolerance in 
this case did not come alone from above, from ecclesiastical 
authority; the professors themselves avoided a colleague who 
was too bold, and constrained him to abandon his opinions. 
They denounced him, not to the bishop of Paris or his chan- 
cellor — they were too fearful of having the episcopate, the 
local power, meddle in their affairs, — but directly to the pope, 
whose sovereign judgment they invoked in matters of 
doctrine. 

It was the pope, therefore, to whom they addressed them- 
selves in 1212, when there occurred the first recorded inci- 
dent of that long and ardent struggle, which in the thirteenth 
century brought the university to blows with its immediate 
chief, the chancellor of Notre-Dame. 

This functionary was one of the chief dignitaries of the 
chapter, usually a theologian of renown, a writer or an es- 
teemed preacher. His importance proceeded from his double 
office : on the one hand, he wrote, sealed, and despatched the 
correspondence of the church at Paris ; on the other, he rep- 
resented the bishop as superintendent of instruction in the 
episcopal jurisdiction, supervised the schools, and conferred 
the license to teach. When the university was organized, 
the chancellor quite naturally found himself at its head; he 
continued to exercise the disciplinary and judicial powers, 
which he had over all schools of the diocese, over the corpora- 
tion of masters and students as well. 

This fact alone is enough to explain the inevitable con- 
flict. The university, like all powerful communities aspiring 
to govern itself, could not get along with a master having 



90 SOCIAL FEANCE 

independent authority. Outside of the corporation, and not 
chosen by it, he nevertheless by virtue of his position under- 
took to direct it, control its acts, and to intervene from day 
to day in its private affairs. To-day state interests and 
necessities are grasped by all. Not so the university men of 
the middle ages; they understood only privilege, and were 
concerned solely for the interests and extension of their or- 
ganization. Their manners were violent. Besides, they felt 
themselves backed by the head of the universal church. 
Everything combined to put them into a state of perpetual 
conspiracy against the chancellor. 

In 1211, the chancellorship was held by Jean des Chan- 
delles, the successor of the theologian, Prevostin of Cremona, 
but of decidedly less reputation. According to masters and 
students, this dignitary did them every possible wrong. He 
exacted an oath of fidelity and obedience from candidates for 
professorships; sometimes he even made them pay for the 
permission to begin a course. If some schoolman committed 
an offense, he began by imprisoning him, even when there 
was no reason for believing that the culprit intended to flee 
judgment, and when taking bail would have been adequate. 
As a condition of liberating these fellows, the chancellor 
exacted a sum which he turned to his own uses, so that he 
appeared to be actuated less by a love of justice than by a 
desire to have a good income. 

Such was the complaint upon which Innocent III seized. 
" In my day," cried he, '' when I studied at Paris, I never 
saw scholars treated in that fashion." He immediately or- 
dered the chancellor to improve his conduct, and charged 
the head of a neighboring diocese, the bishop of Troyes, and 
not the bishop of Paris, with the task of inflicting ecclesias- 
tical censure, with no heed to an appeal, upon the chancellor 
if he failed to put an end to his misconduct. It was not 
necessary to use extreme measures against Jean des Chan- 
delles. He agreed to arbitrate, and accepted the decision of 
the arbiters given in August, 1213. Victory remained with 
the masters and the students. Never again could the chan- 
cellor exact oath or money from candidates for the license. 
He was forbidden to incarcerate clerics, save in cases of evi- 
dent necessity. In no trial of a schoolman, where he was 



THE STUDENT 91 

the judge, eould he levy a fine: he could only condemn the 
offender to indemnify the injured party. All this was to be 
an absolute rule for the future; but the sentence contained 
temporary clauses relative to the particular chancellor in 
office. The granting of the license should no longer depend 
on his good will. He could still give the license to whom 
he wished, but he might not refuse it to candidates whom 
the majority of the professors of theology, law, and medicine 
had approved as fit to teach. As for the " artists," a com- 
mission of six professors, nominated by the chancellor and 
the faculty, and renewable each six months, was to be the 
sole judge of their fitness. If the chancellor took no account 
of this nomination of professors, the person designated was 
to be invested with the license by the bishop of Paris ex 
officio. The same bishop was also to decide finally whether 
the chancellor might or might not incarcerate delinquent 
scholars. 

Here for the first time the right of the bishop of Paris to 
intervene in the organization of the university is expressly 
mentioned. The bishop, Peter of Nemours, sanctioned this 
arbitral sentence; the first battle had been lost by the chan- 
cellor. But, at bottom, the episcopal power was struck by the 
Same blow. This the bishop well understood, and that is 
why in the same act in which he registered and confirmed the 
decision of the arbiters he took care to add this proviso: 
" saving in all things our jurisdiction and the authority of 
the church of Paris." A formula of this character in a 
society adhering most rigidly to legal forms permitted the 
revocation of the concession, if necessary. The authority of 
the church of Paris was singularly easy to confound with that 
of the chancellor of the church of Paris. 

However, the last word said in this business was not the 
charter of Peter of Nemours. The pope had taken notice 
of the complaint of the university; the pope, or his agent, 
must close the incident. In November, 1213, Herve, bishop 
of Troyes and representative of Innocent, in a letter of rati- 
fication assembled aU the preceding documents: that is, the 
bull of the pope, the episcopal charter containing the sen- 
tence of arbitration, and the confirmation of the chancellor. 
This was the end of the affair. It demonstrates very force- 



92 SOCIAL FRANCE 

fully that Rome was in everything, especially in university 
affairs, the beginning and the end, principium et finis. 



At Paris, as at Montpellier, the first statute oi organiza- 
tion of the university was the work of a cardinal-legate, the 
representative of the Holy See. Cardinal Robert of Courcon 
had already in 1213, as president of the provincial synod of 
Paris, attempted a partial reform when he forbade the cures 
to learn the profane sciences in the schools. If with the 
consent of their bishop they went to Paris, they could only 
study theology. The prohibition was especially emphatic for 
monks. Too many monks sought to leave their monasteries 
to hear university courses in medicine and civil law, two 
subjects which, they said, made it possible to minister the 
better to their sick brethren and to work the more usefully 
in the temporal affairs of their congregations. But the 
authorities could not let this influx of the clergy into the 
schools go on indefinitely, and let the church fall into dis- 
order, merely to give clerics the leisure to be students at 
Paris. The council declared monks excommunicated if they 
did not return to their cloisters within two months. 

This was only a prelude to a more general rule which, 
by the authority of the head of the Roman church, be- 
came a law of the university in August, 1215. This new 
rule was not a systematic and complete constitution, an 
organic decree designed to settle all questions which the 
material, moral, and intellectual affairs of the school might 
raise, but a series of articles run together without any unity 
and, as it were, by accident. Nothing could be more discon- 
nected or fundamentally more incomplete. The legate simply 
repeated those points which experience had settled by some 
decision or reform. Above everything else, he concerned 
himself with the recruiting of professors, the conditions un- 
der which the professors worked, and with the confirmation 
of the essential privileges of the body. But, such as it was, 
the act of Robert of Courcon is notable for the light which 
it sheds on the habits of the university and on the abuses 
which were already practised in it. 

An age qualification was fixed for teachers of theology as 



THE STUDENT 93 

well as for teachers of the liberal arts. The doctor of the- 
ology must be at least thirty-five years old, have had at least 
ten years of general studies and five years of theological 
training. He should not receive a license unless he led a 
good life, had good manners, and had proven his capacity. 
To be a master of arts, one must be at least twenty-one years 
old, have been a student for at least six years, and must pos- 
sess a license under the conditions fixed by the arbitral sen- 
tence of 1213. On the other hand, one was not allowed to 
open a course for the simple pleasure of giving a few lectures 
and then moving on : the teacher had to promise to teach for 
at least two years. 

The solemn assemblies of professors and the granting of 
licenses to students gave the occasion for great, prolonged, 
and costly banquets. The university brotherhood, like all 
brotherhoods of the middle ages, loved to feast. The cardinal 
formally forbade these orgies: nulla fiant convivia; he per- 
mitted only the invitation of a few friends or comrades. He 
was not wrong, if one considers the number of letters found 
in the formularies showing the deep inroad upon the purses 
of their fathers made by students in paying the expenses 
connected with attaining the mastership. The professor, 
Buoncompagno gives the form of a letter written from 
Bologna to a father to tell him of the success of his son. 
It begins in a lyrical strain, citing Psalms : 

" ' Sing unto the Lord a new song ' ; for your son has successfully 
undergone his solemn test in the presence of an immense assemblage 
of professors and students. He repHed without mistake to all the 
questions asked him, he shut up the mouths of all disputants : no 
one could bring him to the wall. Besides, he gave a banquet which 
will long be remembered; both poor and rich were invited; it was a 
feast without precedent. Finally, he has begun his course in such 
a way as to empty the schools of the others, attracting around his 
chair the mass of the students." 

Another letter, the counterpart of the preceding one, con- 
cerns the unfortunate candidate who lacked money: 

" The people invited to his banquet were so poorly fed that they 
did not even desire to drink. He opened his course with novices 
and hired listeners." 



94 SOCIAL FRANCE 

The prohibition of feasts by Robert of Courgon seems to 
show that things at Paris were much as at Bologna, and that 
among the university's traditions the sumptuous feast of the 
licentiate was highly prized. 

If the cardinal suppressed the banquets, he still permitted 
the distributions of clothes and other things which accom- 
panied the licensing. " These might be increased," he said, 
*' so that the poor especially could benefit by them," He 
required the student who had become a master of arts to 
have a decent appearance, in keeping with his ecclesiastical 
position: he should wear a round cope of dark material, 
reaching to his heels. He should fulfil another require- 
ment of decency, one which, it appears, university men did 
not often observe: attend the funeral services of members 
of the university. Upon the death of a scholar, half of the 
professors of the faculty to which he belonged were to follow 
the train; at the next death, it was the turn of the other 
half. The legislator who established this rotation took care 
to specify that those attending should not leave before the 
end of the service. At the death of a professor, all his col- 
leagues must attend the vigil, which took place in the church 
" until midnight or even later." On the day of the burial 
all courses should be suspended. 

Two articles of the constitution of 1215 determined the 
status of the students. " Every student," said the cardinal, 
" must have a master to whom he attaches himself." This 
was directed against the innumerable quasi-students who did 
not attend any course of lectures. Further, ** every master 
must have jurisdiction over his scholar {forum sui scolaris 
habeat),^^ an indication of the close bond then existing be- 
tween the teacher and his students. He was their director, 
and their judge; he was responsible for their conduct, and 
had, therefore, the right of correction. He was both master 
and magistrate. 

This rule, emanating from Rome, naturally contained a 
clause designed to protect the university against the chan- 
cellor of Notre-Dame and the church of Paris. No one should 
be permitted to teach who had given money to the chancellor 
or to any other dignitary, who had sworn an oath of fealty, 
or who had surrendered his liberty in any way whatever. 



THE STUDENT 95 

Masters and scholars were guaranteed the right to form, 
associations among themselves or with others ; to form sworn 
leagues {constitutiones fide, vet pena, vel juramento vallatas) 
under clearly specified circumstances: if a university man 
had been killed, wounded, or had sustained grave injury; 
if justice had been denied him, if a mutual burial associa- 
tion was contemplated, if it was imperative to impose lodg- 
ing prices on the citizens of Paris, etc. This last matter 
was a subject of frequent disagreement. The Paris house- 
holders took advantage of the difficulty the students had in 
finding lodgings to raise the price above all reason; and, 
under all circumstances, showed but little consideration for 
their tenants. " I rented a commodious apartment," wrote 
John of Salisbury, " but, before occupying it, I had to pay 
about twelve livres [fifteen hundred francs in cash] ; I was 
not allowed to establish myself in it without paying a whole 
year's rent." 

In short, Eobert of Courgon formally recognizes the right 
of organization within the university. The papacy gave it 
a means of fighting, of defense, and of attack. It was des- 
tined to be used against the police and the citizens, but espe- 
cially against the church of Paris and its chancellor. Barely 
four years passed after the reform when the latent conflict 
between the bishop and the university suddenly became active. 

In 1219, Peter of Nemours, bishop of Paris, and Philip of 
Greve, his chancellor, excommunicated all university men, 
who had, or who should, league themselves together by oath 
without episcopal permission. Any one who had seen armed 
scholars running about the streets at night and had not 
informed the officials or the chancellor was also to be 
excommunicated. Fundamentally, it was part of the conflict 
between the bishopric and the Holy See, for the bishop 
attacked the university because it made use of the right 
of confederation which a legate of the pope had granted 
it. Peter of Nemours did not recognize the legality 
of this concession; on this point he was in direct opposi- 
tion to Rome. And he so fully realized the gravity of 
the deed that he depended on a precedent authorized by 
another legate to legitimatize his step. He and Philip of 
Greve pretended that they were simply renewing an ex- 



96 SOCIAL FEANCE 

commimieatioii laid by Eudes of Sully, former bishop 
of Paris, upon the masters and students with the approba- 
tion of Cardinal Oetavian, the legate of Innocent III. But 
no one has ever seen the text of this first sentence of 
anathema, and Peter of Nemours, if required to produce it, 
would have been unable to do so. The documents of the 
time of Eudes of Sully say nothing of it. Is it not, besides, 
very unlikely that a legate of the pope would have sanc- 
tioned this blow struck at the university, the protege of 
Rome? 

In his bull of March, 1219, Pope Honorius III seems to 
accuse the bishop of Paris of having invented the undis- 
coverable decree of Eudes of Sully. At any rate, he ordered 
the archbishop of Eouen to annul the recent anathema, and 
threatened any one who should dare to lay anathema on the 
university, without having been authorized to do so hy the 
Roman Church, with all the wrath of the Holy See. The 
rights of the pope and the rights of the bishop were here 
clearly at variance. "Who would carry the day? The bishop 
refused to yield. It became necessary for Honorius to order 
another representative of the Roman power, Herve, bishop 
of Troyes, to force Peter of Nemours to obey (May 11, 1219). 
Thanks to this second bull, we know certain details of the 
process. 

After having vainly asked the bishop of Paris to produce 
the sentence of Eudes of Sully, the university men went to 
the heart of the matter. " What is understood by this 
offense of coalition with which you reproach us? Does it 
mean a permissible organization for a praiseworthy and legiti- 
mate end, or an unjust or illegal coalition? " "It means," 
replied the adherents of the bishop, " any kind of a coali- 
tion, legitimate or illegitimate." " Then it is an attempt 
on our rights, and we appeal to the pope." The university 
decided that it would plead its case at Rome. But repre- 
sentation at Rome was expensive, and the professors and 
scholars had as yet no common funds for this purpose. They 
provided for it by a subscription (collecta). The masters 
and the clerics swore to subscribe the sum fixed by their 
advocates. The money having been collected, the representa- 
tives set out. Then the chancellor declared all the teachers 



THE STUDENT 97 

and all the students who had combined or paid the sub- 
scription, excommunicated. They were no longer admitted 
even to confession. 

There was great commotion among the scholars ; one cannot 
imagine what such a prohibition meant in the middle ages. 
The university begged the bishop to recall this rigorous sen- 
tence. The canons of Notre-Dame and Guerin, the minister 
of Philip Augustus, added their importunities to those of 
the academic body. The bishop and his chancellor remained 
inflexible: they suspended some of the professors and im- 
prisoned some of the students; and, finally, the university 
answered by a general suspension of all of the courses. " The 
voice of science was silent at Paris," wrote Honorius III. 
It is a shame (these are his own words) " that an officer 
of the bishop harms the great school of Paris and stops the 
flow of the great river of knowledge which, through its many 
branches, waters and nourishes the land of the universal 
church." The decree of excommunication was again can- 
celled; the chancellor *' and accomplices " were commanded 
to come and justify themselves at Rome, whither the pope 
also summoned the representatives of the university. 

What was the outcome of this conflict of 1219 ? The docu- 
ments do not inform us. Only a few of the records of the 
process have come down to us : namely, those emanating from 
the Holy See or from its delegates. Neither the justification 
of the bishop of Paris nor the motives which had led him on 
are ascertainable. It was, no doubt, as always, the daily or 
nightly misdeeds which the students, sheltered behind their 
privileges, were forever committing, and the intolerable situ- 
ation into which these privileges forced the church by com- 
pelling her to close her eyes to innumerable scandals and 
to let many a guilty man go unpunished. This much is clear, 
that in November, 1219, Philip of Greve, the chancellor, pre- 
sented himself at Eome before the apostolic tribunal, to find 
that the university, his accuser, had sent no representative. 
Perhaps that body itself did not have a clear conscience; 
perhaps it was sufficient to have secured an annulment of 
the sentence. The plaintiff defaulting, the chancellor re- 
turned to Paris and resumed his office. 

It was in the last days of this year of troubles and during 



98 SOCIAL FRANCE 

the following year that the mendicant friars of the newly- 
founded order of Saint Dominie were being introduced into 
Paris and into the quarter of the schools, — an event of great 
importance in university history. 

This new monastic creation furnished the papacy, on which 
it entirely depended, a thoroughly devoted army. Between 
the Dominicans and a university, both directed and pro- 
tected by the same power, sympathy could all the more read- 
ily be established, because they had a community of interests. 
If the university, forever at war with the bishop of Paris 
and with the Parisian clergy, was constantly menaced with 
deprivation of the sacraments and of the religious offices, 
the order of the Dominicans also from the beginning found 
itself at variance with the officially constituted clergy. These 
mendicants had not only the right, but also the duty, to 
influence Christian souls by preaching. Many of them were 
priests, who had obtained from the pope the permission to 
hear the confessions of the faithful and to exercise the same 
functions as the cures. This new clergy, compelled by its 
rule to be without possessions and to live by begging — ^more 
exemplary and more virtuous because, without being in the 
cloister, they practised its austerities, — proved to be a strong 
competitor to the priests of the parishes and chapters. The 
secular clergy could not patiently witness these aggressive 
monks establish themselves in the villages, and dispute the 
cure of souls with those who until then had had a monopoly 
of this function. On . the contrary, one can imagine with 
what joy the university received the new comrades. Preach- 
ing friars! it meant a full-fledged university clergy. 

The first Dominicans of Paris had originally been estab- 
lished in a little house near the Hotel-Dieu. In 1218, at thp 
demand of Pope Honorius, the university gave them quarters 
and a chapel. Increased and enlarged, these quarters became 
the convent of the Jacobins, situated opposite the church of 
Saint-!fitienne-des-Gres on the ground to-day between the 
Rues Cujas and Soufflot. These preachers, installed in a 
building of the university, in December, 1219, obtained the 
right to celebrate divine services in it, and the pope sent 
the masters and scholars a bull of congratulation. But the 
priests of the parish of Saint-Benoit complained to their 



THE STUDENT 99 

superiors, the canons of Notre-Dame, of the competition of 
the mendicant friars, and objected to having a mass read 
in the chapel of Saint-Jacques. Irritated by this resistance, 
Honorius ordered the priors of Saint-Denis and of Saint- 
Germain-des-Pres to take the necessary steps to suppress it. 
The victory remained with the Dominicans, who were very 
popular on the left bank of the Seine. The first charter of 
the university as a body had for its object, as we have said, 
the alliance of the scholars and the mendicants into one reli- 
gious body (1221). Many of these monks studied theology, 
awaiting the time, which was not long in coming, to elevate 
themselves into the ranks of the professors and to occupy 
masters' chairs. Many of the university men, on the other 
hand, ceased to live as secular clergy and took the dress and 
the rule of Saint Dominic. The two bodies soon amalgamated 
so well that at the time of the death of Philip Augustus, the 
general of the order. Master Jourdain, in a letter expressed 
the hope that all the scholars at Paris would finally become 
Jacobins. 

The introduction of the order of Saint Dominie into the 
great scholastic center was another success for the papacy 
and another blow aimed at the power of the church of Paris. 
The passions of the adherents and the opponents of this 
church only became the more violent; almost immediately a 
new conflict broke out. 

In 1220, Honorius III had transferred William of Seigne- 
lay, bishop of Auxerre, to the bishopric of Paris against the 
wishes of Philip Augustus, who favored another candidate. 
"William was a combative man, who in his first position had 
already sustained a violent struggle against the feudal barons 
and against the king. At Paris he continued in the same 
course; he had three or four quarrels with Philip Augustus. 
To a bishop of this temper the university problem was sim- 
ple: declare war against the teachers and scholars, and un- 
reservedly support the claims of the chancellor. Evidently 
Bishop William of Seignelay and Chancellor Philip of Greve 
were in perfect accord. 

The historian, William of Armorica, asserts that the bishop 
made himself obnoxious to the king and to the entire 
university : 



100 SOCIAL FRANCE 

" He conducted himself -with such rudeness, that all the doctors 
of theology and those of the other faculties stopped their courses 
for six months, which made him detested by the clergy, by the people, 
and by the nobility." 

But the annalist of the church of Auxerre strongly sup- 
ports William of Seignelay: 

" There were among the Parisian scholars real bandits, who at 
night ran armed about the streets, and committed adultery, rape, 
murder, robbery, and the most heinous crimes without being pun- 
ished. Not only was the university no longer secure, but the citizens 
themselves did not live in peace by day or by night. The bishop 
knew how to rid the city of these brigands. The worst were im- 
prisoned for life, the others hunted from Paris, and order was 
restored." 

Given these two contradictory opinions, what was the 
truth? The bishop of Paris represented a very respectable 
cause, that of good conduct. The privileges granted by Philip 
Augustus to the scholars were too great; but William of 
Seignelay had still other grievances. In a complaint sent 
to Pope Honorius III in April, 1221, he accused the masters 
and the scholars of having formed a permanent conspiracy 
against his authority and that of the chancellor: 

" They have made a seal and dispense with that of the chancellery. 
They arbitrarily j&x the scale of rents, in spite of the ordinance on 
this subject issued by the king and accepted by the university. 
They have set up a tribunal of their own before which they carry 
all their law-suits, as though the jurisdiction of the bishop and of 
the chancellor did not exist. In brief, they encroach in every way 
on the episcopal power, and enfeeble it to such a degree that, unless 
good order is restored, the greatest scandals may arise and the school 
of Paris may be dissolved." 

These accusations of the bishop are specific; they show 
the tenacity with which the masters and the scholars tried 
to shake off the yoke of the local ecclesiastical powers and 
to make a veritable sovereignty of their corporation. 

Honorius III must have given the complaints of William 
of Seignelay perfunctory consideration, at least. He ordered 
the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops of Troyes and of 
Lisieux to make an inquiry and to try to reconcile the parties. 



THE STUDENT 101 

This was such a difficult task that in May, 1222, the pope 
himself, while awaiting the end of the process which was 
unraveling itself at Rome, was obliged to impose a modus 
Vivendi on the belligerents. But this act was equal to a new 
victory for the university. He annulled the excommunication 
of the masters and the scholars and forbade the bishop to 
incarcerate or disturb the suspected university students with 
a demand for satisfaction. They were to be allowed to give 
bail: this is the habeas corpus act of the school of Paris. 
The bishop, the judge, and the chancellor were forbidden to 
exact an oath of obedience or of fealty of any kind whatever 
from the licentiates. The prison erected by the chancellor 
was to be demolished. Neither the bishop nor his officers 
were to inflict any pecuniary punishment on the teachers or 
the pupils, under pain of excommunication. The chancellor 
was to give the master's degree in any of the faculties only 
to candidates whose fitness had been attested by their own 
professor and by a jury of professors elected for the purpose. 
Finally, the bishop and his officers were not to prevent the 
masters admitted to the licentiate by the abbot of Sainte- 
Genevieve from beginning their teaching. 

This last prohibition reveals an important fact in the de- 
velopment of the university corporation. A great part of 
the teachers who had formerly dwelt in the Cite, round about 
Notre-Dame, had crossed the Petit pont and had established 
themselves on the north slope of Mont Sainte-Genevieve. 
They were being smothered on the island, and they especially 
wanted to rid themselves of the episcopal power which perse- 
cuted them. The masters of arts, especially, installed them- 
selves in large numbers in the Rues du Fouarre, de la 
Bucherie, and de la Huchette, centers from which they spread 
over the whole left bank. But the abbot of Sainte-Genevieve, 
the seignior of this territory, had, like the chapter of Notre- 
Dame, his academic authority and the right to create licen- 
tiates. The university asked him to compete with the 
chancellor in the conferring of degrees. The exodus of the 
scholars from the Cite and the licenses of Sainte-Genevieve 
were the two decisive and effective steps toward independence 
taken by the university against its adversaries. 

William of Seignelay died at the end of the year 1223, 



102 SOCIAL PRANCE 

but the conflict continued. Philip Augustus himself died 
before the parties had made peace. But by that time the 
university had attained its ends. We have seen its constitu- 
ent elements gradually evolve and we have been able to 
note the principal steps in its formation. By the royal privi- 
lege of 1200, the master and the student escaped from the 
jurisdiction of the police and of the lay sovereign. By the 
compromises of 1213 and of 1222 and by the decree of 1215 
they began to limit the power of the chancellor, and were 
victorious in various contests. In all the acts of internal 
regulation which they accepted after 1192, they were made, 
or voluntarily made themselves, dependent on the pope, and 
freed themselves more and more from the local authority. 
All this decisive and rapid progress occurred during the reign 
of Philip Augustus. But he had little to do with it, for, with 
the exception of the single act of 1200, everything transpired 
without his participation. 

The pope had full power over the professors and scholars, 
administrative and legislative power — power of direction, of 
control, and of correction ; absolute power over the mind and 
over the body, over subjects to be taught as well as over 
the personnel teaching them. The most extraordinary proof 
of this unlimited authority is the famous bull of 1219, Super 
speculam, by which Honorius III expressly forbade any 
course in civil law to be opened or attended in Paris or in 
the neighborhood of Paris, under pain of excommunication. 

Now what did the papacy want? To stop the scientific 
movement, to substitute canon for Eoman law, to announce 
the inferiority of secular legislation, to prevent the civil 
powers from organizing, and so find a successful way of 
securing the dominance of church over state? This thesis 
has been maintained with heat by scholars of the highest 
rank, but it does not seem to agree with the facts or even 
with the language of the texts. It gratuitously attributes 
to the Roman Church profound designs and a Machiavellian 
plan to destroy the civil law, something that was certainly 
far from its mind. Neither Honorius III nor his successor, 
Innocent lY, who renewed the bull Super speculam, was 
deliberately hostile to Roman law. They prohibited it for 
Paris only: they allowed the study of the subject in other 



THE STUDENT 103 

French universities created after the death of Philip Augus- 
tus. They had, in truth, a double purpose: first, to fortify 
the study of theology by giving the university of Paris a 
sort of monopoly of this branch of higher learning, by mak- 
ing this university the school of theology par excellence, 
charged with providing for the wants of the whole Christian 
world ; second, to forbid the monks and the clerics to abandon 
their professional duties and to prevent them from gaining 
sufficient knowledge of civil law to follow lucrative careers 
as officers of justice, or administrators and lawyers in Paris. 
The decree of 1219 was directed neither against science, nor 
against the liberty of the professors. It was directed against 
the clergy who threatened to disorganize the church by aban- 
doning the priesthood. It was an act of ecclesiastical reform, 
the object of which has been misunderstood. Whatever its 
later significance, it shows in a positive way the essential fact 
of the early history of the university of Paris : it was not the 
king of France, it was not the bishop of Paris; it was the 
pope who ruled over that institution. 



CHAPTER IV 
THE CANON 

We have seen the cleric in the parish, and in the school; 
we shall now see him endowed with a benefice or a prebend 
in a chapter. He is devoted to religious service in a cathe- 
dral church, the seat of a bishop or of an archbishop — as at 
Notre-Dame of Paris, Notre-Dame of Chartres, Sainte-Croix 
of Orleans, Saint-Etienne of Bourges, — or in a collegiate 
church, which is not the residence of a bishop — as Saint- 
Quentin, Saint-Spire of Corbeil, Saint-Martin of Tours, Saint- 
Hilaire of Poitiers. These churches are really served by a 
community or a college of priests, deacons, and subdeacons. 
These are the canons, canonic^ so-called, it has been said, 
because their community was subjected to a collection of 
canons, to a rule. But in that case the term is not very well 
justified. It would apply much better to those properly called 
religious — to the monks, who were subordinated to a decid- 
edly more rigorous rule of community life. Really, at the 
time which we are studying, the canons of the cathedral and 
of the collegiate churches lived together only at the times 
when they assembled to hold their chapter-meeting or to hold 
services. The service finished, they had their own quarters 
inside the cloister, or even outside the cloister, where they 
could take their meals and sleep, and where they lived with 
their families. They were more or less in contact with the 
faithful in the church to which they were attached, and even 
outside the church — for a certain number of them exercised 
the function of curates, having charge of the souls of the 
parish. They were not isolated and systematically secluded 
from the world like the monks. Their cloister, in spite of 
the name, was not the monastic cloister: it was only the 
space, often rather large, where their own houses were situ- 
ated; a space adjoining the church, it is true, but one which 
was not always actually inclosed by a wall. 

104 



THE CANON 105 

The communities of canons are, then, easily distinguished 
from the communities of monks, for the spirit which pre- 
vailed was not the same, and the rule of life was very differ- 
ent. Still, one must be cautious in the use of medieval terms, 
which are often misleading, and about the character of its 
institutions, which are extremely complex. There were monks 
living in community who were called canons, but these were 
really monks under a monastic rule; and there were canons 
regular, in distinction from those of the cathedrals and 
of the collegiate churches, the canons secular. Of this kind 
are the canons regular of the congregations of Saint- Victor 
and of Premontre. But the canons of Premontre lived 
cloistered in an abbey, subject to a rule at least as severe as 
that of the Benedictines of Cluny or of the Bernardines of 
Clairvaux: they only bore the names of canons; they really 
belonged to monastic society. 

If the secular canons were not monks, they also differed 
from ordinary clerics in that they lived in a sort of com- 
munity and formed a spiritual and temporal seigniory, own- 
ing lands, vassals, and subjects. The chapter was a collective 
lord, which had its rank in feudal society. Finally, canons 
were distinguished from other clerics by their costumes: a 
surplice (superpellicium) , a loose linen dalmatic, with wide 
sleeves, covering the pelisson (pellicium) , the present cassock; 
and on the head an amice of thick black stuff, with a flat top, 
terminating at each corner in a sort of horn. 

Canons had a double reason for being. First, they did 
their religious services, the work of continuous prayer, and 
of the celebration of great Christian feasts. They were, so 
to speak, the officers of public prayer, a function of common 
interest which could not be interrupted or left in abeyance 
without menacing the security of the people. And, then, it 
was they who formed the council of the bishop, and, with 
the bishop, constituted the administrators of the diocese ; for, 
at the period of Philip Augustus, as a rule, the bishop was 
elected by the chapter, and the archdeacons, his assistants, 
were only canons. To pray, and in the meantime to perform 
administrative functions, that was their double mission. 

This word canon immediately brings before our minds the 
picture of a person with a florid complexion, large and fat, 



106 SOCIAL FRANCE 

and well paid for doing nothing. Prebend has become a 
synonym for sinecure. One cannot speak of canons without 
being reminded of those whom Boileau has so well depicted, 
those prelates with triple chins, those subjects of Indolence 
who fought over a choir-stall. It is evident that, at the 
period of Louis XIV, the religious services, having been sim- 
plified and the needs of the faithful having greatly dimin- 
ished along with popular faith, the beneficiaries of the church 
lived luxuriously on their benefices without much worry. 
Many were not in residence, causing themselves to be re- 
placed by vicars and only having the bother of collecting 
their incomes. One cannot say that similar abuses were not 
practised in the middle ages, and that the canons of the time 
of Philip Augustus did not already try to get as much as 
possible for a minimum of trouble. But it is certain that 
the service of public prayer was then complicated, the faith- 
ful firmly convinced of its necessity and therefore very 
exacting. 

To obtain a good idea of what happened in cathedral 
or collegiate churches, one should read the '* ordi- 
naries," " pontificals," *' rituals," or even " manuals," 
which every bishopric and every church possessed. They 
contain a minute enumeration of the chants and ceremonies 
proper for each day of the year, for each religious ceremony. 
In the middle age much more importance was attached to 
the exact observance of the liturgy than in the modern epoch ; 
tradition was all-powerful, ceremonial was a sacred thing; 
the slightest sound of the voice, the smallest step, the minutest 
gesture of those officiating were anticipated, and indicated 
in the rituals with extreme care. It is enough to glance, 
through one of these books — for example, the ordinary of 
the cathedral of Laon, which was drawn up by the dean of 
the chapter just at the time of Philip Augustus — to be fright- 
ened at the interminable list of anthems, responses, psalms, 
prayers, hymns, and public ceremonies, marches, and pro- 
cessions to which the canons were subjected. 

Every day had its office, or rather its series of offices. The 
least significant of days, the one the least weighted down — 
for example, an ordinary week day, — still had five offices, 
or five " canonical hours," as they were then called: the 



THE CANON 107 

office of matins at sunrise, the office of lauds, the office of 
the mass, after noon the office of vespers, and' at sundown 
the office of compline (completoriv/m) . Sundays the need 
increased, and there were nine offices: matins, lauds, prime, 
terce, high mass, sext, nones, vespers, and compline. And 
this only applied to ordinary Sundays; the complication of 
the services increased on days of great solenmity. To enter 
a little farther into details, take at random the offices of a 
week day: for example, the sixth day or Friday after 
Ascension. The office of matins comprises a chant called the 
invitatorium, three anthems, three psalms, and three lessons; 
laud, several anthems and prayers; mass, the traditional 
chants; vespers, certain anthems and chants; compline, a 
hymn and some prayers. And this is a minimum; on holi- 
days the number of chants grows to considerable proportions. 
It is well known how numerous festivals were in the calendars 
of the middle ages. To the regular festivals were added the 
festivals of saints honored in the diocese, the festivals of the 
martyr whose relics the church possessed. And, finally, the 
ordinary service, full as it was, was still more complicated 
by the services arising from endowments of masses for the 
dead. It was necessary to celebrate the anniversaries of the 
benefactors and great persons, lay and ecclesiastical, who had 
for some reason merited the recognition of the chapter. 
Manifestly, the religious functions of the canons of the mid- 
dle ages were not a sinecure. 

Add to this that the chapter was an electoral body, called 
upon to choose a bishop and certain canonical dignitaries and 
to name a certain number of cures ; that it was also a college 
of proprietors, which had a temporal seigniory to direct and 
administer. In the church, as weU as in the chapter, the 
canons were, therefore, sufficiently occupied. It is true that, 
as ministers of the ceremonies of the church, they were aided 
by a certain number of priests, of chaplains, and of clerics 
not members of the chapter. It is also true that, to adminis- 
ter their properties, they delegated certain of their number, 
known as provosts, to look after the material interests of the 
community. In spite of all this, there was in the chapters 
a considerable amount of work to distribute among the mem- 
bers; the professional obligations were pressing, so pressing 



108 SOCIAL FRANCE 

that the canons — and this is merely human — sought means 
of divesting themselves of them, or at least of lightening 
their tasks. So it came that, at the time of which we write, 
ecclesiastical authorities were constantly forced to hinder this 
tendency and, by constraint or otherwise, compel the members 
of the chapter to fulfil the duties of their offices. 

That was the chief difficulty. The canons were always 
ready to take the revenues of their prebends — that is to say, 
the part of the property of the chapter which had been 
assigned to each of them, — but they showed less willingness 
to reside and take part in the offices. Certain of them had 
never put foot into the church to which they were attached ; 
they were canons in partihus, provided with benefices else- 
where. They only belonged to a chapter for pecuniary rea- 
sons, to receive an income. Others were always traveling 
outside of the town in which they should have been living, 
on the pretext of studying or making a pilgrimage. Finally, 
others absented themselves simply to go into business or to 
become lawyers, and they did not even take the trouble to 
ask for leave of absence from the head of the chapter. A 
letter which Pope Urban III in 1187 sent to the provost 
of the chapter of Maguelonne instructs us clearly on this 
point. 

" It is not without astonishment that we bear reports of the eon- 
duet of certain of your canons. They go away without your per- 
mission, to study civil law or profane literature, or they even absent 
themselves for worldly affairs, so as to be able to give themselves 
pleasure the more easily. Some of them are even more audacious; 
they leave your chapter to ofiSciate in other churches. This is abso- 
lutely wrong and contrary to the rules. If one of your canons, after 
having taken the oath and the cloth of his order, emancipates him- 
self to such a degree as to go into outside occupations, we authorize 
you in spite of any appeal to correct and punish him." 

Instead of punishing and putting down the evil which had 
established itself, the church judged it better to prevent it 
by making certain concessions to human weakness and by 
subjecting the chapters in the other things to a rigorous 
observance. At the end of the twelfth century and at the 
beginning of the thirteenth the chapters imposed on them- 
selves, or received from the superior authority of the bishop 



THE CANON 109 

or the pope, miimte rules about the " stage " and residence. 
These rules resemble each other greatly in their essential 
dispositions. One need only know a few to know them all. 
As types, one can cite the statutes of the cathedral of Noyon 
of 1213 and of 1217, that of the collegiate church of Saint- 
Spire of Corbeil of 1203, those of the cathedral of Chartres 
of 1208 and 1222, and the reform of the Parisian collegiate 
church of Saint-Marcel of 1205. There are everywhere the 
same dispositions. On one side, they grant the canons the 
liberty of absenting themselves temporarily in certain cir- 
cumstances recognized as legitimate : a sojourn at the schools 
or at the university, a pilgrimage, personal service to the 
bishop. On the other hand, the church consents not to re- 
quire work of them for the entire year: sometimes they are 
given six months of non-residence as at Chartres, sometimes 
four months as at Noyon and at Paris, on the condition that 
for the rest of the term of service they be aided by a vicar, 
to whom they must give a part of their revenue, and that they 
be represented in the cloister by a decent establishment. To 
be classed as a canon " resident "-^that is to say, a resident 
with full powers, enjoying all his prebends — a canon must 
first have made a " stage " in the chapter, a sort of super- 
numerary service for six months, and then he must meet 
the conditions of actual -residence indicated above. Eesident 
canons with foreign titles, foranei, are admitted to the chap- 
ter; but they do not receive the revenues of their prebends. 
One part of this revenue is taken for the vicar who replaces 
them, and the rest is divided among the resident canons. 
Every canon guilty of illegal or overlong absence is con- 
sidered as a *' stranger ": that is to say, he loses the enjoy- 
ment of his prebend. 

These are the general rules; but the statutes about resi- 
dence contain the most detailed prescriptions to prevent a 
canon from circumventing the law. Those of 1213 and 1217 
for the cathedral of Noyon in this respect show a curious 
minuteness. Suppose, for example, that a resident canon 
asked to spend a year at the schools. It might be an indi- 
rect means of getting free from service and of leaving with- 
out any particular object, while enjoying his prebend. The 
case is anticipated. The student-canon is forced to actual 



no SOCIAL FRANCE 

study during his year: he is authorized to take only a 
three months' vacation. If he leaves the university before 
time, he is obliged to come back to the chapter and to be 
in residence as usually required. To take a long journey — 
for example, to make a pilgrimage to Rome — ^he must have 
the permission of the chapter, and, when he returns, he is stiU 
forced to reside for a certain time. At the same time, the 
canon can be delegated for service to the bishop without 
losing his standing of resident, but he is not allowed to leave 
the bishop. If he leaves him before the usual time, he must 
return to the chapter and do his duty for a fixed period 
as a compensation. 

We know very well that the most severe and most minute 
rules were violated. In the middle ages, more than at any 
other period, personal privileges, individual dispensations, 
given by the pope or by the chapter itself, enabled one to 
evade the law. In the statute of Nbyon of 1217 appeared 
significant reservations such as these : ' ' without leave hav- 
ing been obtained, without special dispensation." It was the 
way for clever or moneyed people to get through the meshes 
of the net. To constrain the canons really to be in residence, 
another measure was taken. If the respect for the rule was 
not enough, men were influenced by money. If a canon re- 
mained in residence in order not to be deprived of his 
prebend, if he remained in his cloister or his city, he could 
still arrange to attend church irregularly. He passed whole 
days without appearing, in the choir, avoided certain offices, 
especially the office of matins, or he left before the end of 
the services. In doing so he committed what, in the time of 
Philip Augustus, was called marrantium, fraud. Certain 
chapters came to provide pecuniary punishments against 
the irregulars. In October, 1219, that of the cathe- 
dral of Laon, among other reforms, adopted a series of 
penalties for each infraction of professional duty: each of- 
fice missed, each chant unperformed, cost the delinquent a 
forfeit of a certain number of sous or deniers. 

But this system was not always easy to apply; it irritated 
the canons, without making them much less negligent. In- 
stead of punishing through forfeits, it was judged better to 
attract through the allurement of tokens of attendance, or. 



THE CANON 111 

as they were then called, ** distributions." The distributions 
of money or even in kind are one of the characteristic traits 
of the profession of canon, one of the most curious sides of 
the institution. A canon received not only the more or less 
steady revenues which came to him from his prebend ; he was 
also paid every time — or as often as it was necessary — that 
he appeared at the choir to do his duty. The more assiduous 
he was, the more he profited. These continual distributions 
of sous and deniers to the canons and the chaplains were 
indeed novel spectacles, which, however, did not at all scan- 
dalize the middle ages. For these distributions occurred 
right in the choir of the church, often in full view of every- 
body- The canons immediately received the price of an of- 
fice executed, of an anthem sung. More than that, the canons 
did not only receive money ; they received payments in kind, 
wine, and even quarters of meat. Under certain circum- 
stances a canon was even given a full meal, pastus, which was 
served in the refectory of the chapter by the officer called the 
cook, coquus, who was attached to the community. 

Let us, for example, open the ordinary of the cathedral 
of Laon, and let us take the regular order of offices for the 
week which precedes Christmas. On Monday, one of the 
dignitaries of the chapter begins the anthem O clavis David, 
and he distributes two measures of wine to his colleagues. 
On Tuesday, it is the turn of the grand archdeacon; after 
the anthem he serves the canons with two measures of wine. 
On Thursday the wine is furnished by the hospitaler, on 
Friday by the chamberlain. On great festival days the 
bishop takes part in the offices, but this participation is far 
from being gratuitous. At the mass on Christmas, writes 
the editor of the ritual, he remains standing before the altar, 
surrounded by canons, priests, deacons, and subdeacons. He 
says the Confiteor, and each of his assistants advances and 
kisses him, as they kissed in the middle ages, on the lips. 
Then he says the prayer, and two canons, clothed in silk 
copes, chant the lauds before him. Then they approach and 
the bishop gives each of them twelve deniers " of good 
money." The same distribution follows to the cantor, to 
the subcantor, and to the other officers of the chapter. After 
the office of the sext, the bishop, with the dean and canons. 



112 SOCIAL FEANCE 

goes to the refectory. They take their places. The steward 
— for the chapter, like every feudal lord, had its great offi- 
cers — rings a bell and says the Benedicite. The chaplain 
gives the benediction. Two subdeacons bring the bishop the 
water and towel ; the master of ceremonies, regnarius, or some 
one else, gives a talk; the musicians sing before the bishop 
during the whole meal. At the second course the stroke 
of the handbell is heard; benediction is said by the chap- 
lain, and he is given a leg of mutton, a large loaf, and 
a half -pint of wine. Then another benediction is pronounced 
by the hospitaler. He is given a piece of pork on a dish. 
Two canons standing before the table of the bishop sing a 
hymn, and the bishop gives them some money. On Maunday 
Thursday, after the same ritual, when the ceremony of wash- 
ing the altars has been terminated, the bishop gives them a 
measure of wine, which tha canons drink in the chapter- 
room. On Easter day, as at Christmas, the bishop gives a 
distribution of deniers, and it is the same at all the great 
feasts. 

In the cathedral of Paris, at Notre-Dame, anthems were 
sung, which, one might say, had a money value: those who 
sang them had a right to a distribution. The expense which 
they entailed was paid partly by the bishop, partly by the 
dean or head of the chapter, partly by the canons who fulfilled 
the functions of provosts. Eighteen of these anthems, bring- 
ing money or food, were sung in the week preceding Christ- 
mas. One of them was followed by a distribution of seventy 
rolls and seventy measures of wine to the clergy of the 
cathedral. 

There was a distribution at the time of the installation 
of a new canon, of course at his expense. There was also 
a distribution at the time of each of the administrative acts 
performed by the chapter, at the time of the emancipation 
of serfs, the sale of lands, unexpected changes in the per- 
sonnel of the officers charged with administering the capitular 
goods. But it must not be supposed that the canons were 
remunerated only on these uncertain occasions and on great 
feast days. They were remunerated daily, even for ordinary 
services, but especially when they were present at matins. 
The deniers of the morning (denarii matutinales) were a fund 



THE CANON 113 

of special importance, for attendance of the clergy at matins 
was difficult to attain and, the ordinary resources of the 
chapter not sufficing, many individuals, to assure the safety 
of their souls, made foundations or left legacies specially 
designed for the distribution of money to the participants 
at matins. On this point documents are not lacking; among 
the foundations contemporary with Philip Augustus, it is 
enough to mention that of the sons of Aseelin, dean of Saint- 
Marcel, who in memory of their father, who died in 1180, 
gave to Notre-Dame twenty sous of income ad denarios matu- 
tinorum; that of 1189, likewise designed to recompense the 
clergy, whether canons or not, who came to the choir at day- 
break; finally, the foundation of Bishop Maurice of Sully, 
who left an important sum, one hundred livres (fifteen thou- 
sand francs) for poor clerics who celebrated the office of 
matins, ad denarios matutinales pauperihus clericis. This 
seems to show that the titled canons, those who were pro- 
vided with a good prebend, did not voluntarily appear at 
this office; they left the proceeds of it to clerics outside of 
the chapters, to the auxiliary priests, with whom the 
cathedral was filled. 

The endowments of anniversaries for the repose of the 
souls of certain persons, for the benefactors, both male and 
female, of the chapter, were extremely numerous; it was a 
new source and a very bountiful one, upon which they drew 
to establish new distributions. Here the facts are more 
abundant. It almost suffices to open the cartulary of Notre- 
Dame of Paris at hazard: in 1200, on the anniversary of 
Hugh of Chelles, a distribution of six deniers to all those 
who assist in the office ; in 1204, on the anniversary of Simon 
of Money, canon of Paris, forty sous to be distributed; in 
1205, on the anniversary of a canon of Dun-le-Roi, sixty sous 
(six hundred francs), to be distributed as follows: on the 
day of the anniversary the members of the chapter are to re- 
ceive fifteen sous at mass, fifteen sous at vespers, and the 
remaining thirty sous on the day that the anniversary of 
Thibaud, bishop of Paris, is celebrated. In 1208, another 
bishop of Paris, Eudes of Sully, left the chapter the neces- 
sary sum to found several distributions of deniers and sous — 
one on Saint Stephen's day, another on the Circumcision, 



114 SOCIAL FRANCE 

one on the anniversary of the death of the donor, another 
on Saint Bernard's day to the clergy who should be at 
matins; finally, another for Good Friday, on the occasion of 
the ' ' washing of feet ' ' : that is to say, of the ceremony which 
consisted of washing the feet of the poor. In 1211, Peter 
of Nemours, bishop of Paris, insured services on his anni- 
versary; each of the canons was to receive twelve deniers 
at vigils and as much at mass ; the assistant clergy, three 
deniers at vigils and three at mass. In 1219, the dean 
of the chapter, Hugh Clement, left Notre-Dame a still more 
important legacy. Every day of Lent, excepting Sunday, the 
feet of thirteen poor people were to be washed in the refec- 
tory of the chapter ; there was to be a distribution of money 
to these same poor people, and to the clerics who performed 
the ceremony. There were to be further distributions on the 
anniversary of the birth of the donor: all the members of 
the chapter should receive six deniers at the vigil and six 
at the mass. This was the regular rate for the ministrant. 

These facts suffice to give an idea of the number of special 
ceremonies and the quantity of money to be divided which 
came from the foundation of anniversaries or of masses for 
the dead. And yet we are far from knowing the number 
of these legacies; in the cartularies only those which serve 
to recall the memory of dignitaries of the chapter or of per- 
sons of note are indicated. 

But the people did not leave money only ; devout people, 
or those who wished that their souls should not suffer too long 
in the other world, left endowments for distributions of food. 
They instituted what were called ' ' pasts " or " stations ' ' : 
that is, distributions of bread, of wine, and of meat to the 
canons and to the clerics of the choir. In the Cartulaire de 
Notre-Dame de Paris there is a rule of 1230, only seven years 
after the death of Philip Augustus, which exhibits the ar- 
rangements made by the canons of Notre-Dame in matters 
of this kind under his reign, and, without much doubt, much 
earlier. Besides the stations founded by individual dona- 
tions, there were public and traditional stations, which oc- 
curred on certain fixed days at the expense of the bishop 
and of certain dignitaries of the chapter, or of certain Pari- 
sian churches. A distribution of this kind generally cost 



THE CANON 115 

ten livres, that is about fifteen hundred francs. For ex- 
ample, at Easter and at Christmas the clerics of the choir 
received one hundred half-pints of wine and one hundred 
large loaves; at Pentecost the station of pork consisted of 
one hundred and thirty-seven portions of meat, or frustra, 
which the canons or clerics divided, the highest in dignity, 
as always, receiving a double portion. On the feast days 
of Saints Gervais and Protais nine rams were distributed; 
each ram was cut into fifteen pieces, which the clerics as- 
sisting at the office carried home. The cook of the 
chapter had a right to all the skins, and his three under- 
cooks, minores servientes de coquina, took the feet and the 
heads. At the stations or distributions of pork, the chamber- 
lain and the cook of the chapter had for their part the blood 
and the bowels. 

Everything was regulated with this minuteness. But it 
must be acknowledged that these details give us a singular 
idea of what continually happened inside of collegiate 
churches. We find it hard to associate religious services 
with the distribution of money and food; to harmonize the 
uninterrupted sound of chanting with the clinking of money ; 
to conceive of chapters which are counting-houses and restau- 
rants, where the canon need only appear and sing to be paid 
and fed. 

It is true that, at the time when the rule of 1230 was 
drawn up, the inconveniences of distributions in kind were 
being felt and were gradually being replaced by a distri- 
bution of an equivalent amount of money. This was then 
a general tendency; in the feudal world, thanks to economic 
progress, pecuniary contributions were being substituted for 
fines in kind, for the corvee, for personal services. There- 
fore, the collecting became much easier. In the churches 
the services could only gain in calm and dignity by it. Nev- 
ertheless, the use of stations and even of real meals, or 
banquets, continued a long time. 

Thus, in 1177, a count of Champagne had founded a 
memorial service for himself in a collegiate church of Notre- 
Dame of Oulchy, consisting of two dinners, which should 
follow the funeral service. At the first dinner, all the clergy 
who should present themselves were to be served, and the 



116 SOCIAL FRANCE 

menu was fixed by the donor: the first course a dish of cold 
pork, the second course a dish of goose, third course chicken 
fricassee, " garnished," says the deed of foundation, " with 
good sauce thickened with the yellow of eggs." It is to be 
noted that everything was anticipated. The second meal 
resembled the first, except that beef was served in place of 
the cold pork. Each guest had the right to a half-pint 
of wine, and the quality of this wine was determined : it was 
to be a good drinkable wine, halfway between the most deli- 
cate and the cheapest. 

The memory of these banquets lasted for twenty years in 
the chapter of Oulchy. It was in 1203 that Blanche, countess 
of Champagne, proposed to transform the two meals into 
monetary distributions. Each of them cost about thirty sous, 
that is, six hundred francs to-day. The clergy who appeared 
received money. One cannot say that the change pleased 
them greatly. These love-feasts were the joy of our fathers. 
It was sweet to eat and drink in the holy place before the 
eye of the Lord. 



When the canons took the trouble to be in residence, their 
lives were spent in the choir of their churches and in the 
cloisters which were next to them. Every cathedral and 
collegiate church consisted of two entirely distinct parts: 
the space open to the faithful, to the people, and that which 
was reserved for the canons. 

On the altars of the lateral nave, of the transept, of the 
apsis, and in general in all the chapels of the periphery, 
masses and the anniversary services were celebrated by clergy 
who were not a part of the chapter ; these were the chaplains. 
In great cathedrals, such as Notre-Dame of Paris, this auxil- 
iary clergy was often numerous, for the faithful had the right 
to found chaplaincies on the condition of furnishing the in- 
come necessary to maintain the cure and the worship in his 
chapel. It was thus that, in 1217, a citizen of Paris and his 
wife instituted a chaplain in the church of Notre-Dame solely 
for the purpose of saying daily masses for the repose of their 
souls. All rich and devout people being able to give them- 



THE CANON 117 

selves this luxury of founding a perpetual or a temporary 
mass, the number of clergy who, without being canons, lived 
from the altars in collegiate churches was considerable and in 
a way unlimited. Among these clergymen or these chap- 
lains some had the privilege of serving in the choir at the 
high altar, with the dignitaries and members of the chapter. 
And the chief of these clerics was an important person; he 
was called the " grand chaplain " or simply " chaplain." 
The ministration of this priest was necessary to the canons, 
many of whom had not received the priesthood; he had a 
conspicuous place in all solemn ceremonies and received a 
part of the distributions. 

The church of a chapter was, therefore, filled with clerics, 
who sometimes officiated in the chapels, sometimes in the 
choir. But the choir was primarily the domain of the canons ; 
it belonged to them as their own ; it was there that they had 
their places, their stalls, radiating from the sanctuary, ac- 
cording to the character of their titles and of their seniority. 
The choir was that reserved part to which the faithful had 
no access. 

It is well known that, at the end of the middle ages, all 
the choirs of capitular churches were more or less inclosed, 
at first by a partition which served as a support to the back 
of the stalls and ran around the high altar, and also by a 
loft in front of the stalls, such as that we still see at Saint- 
Etienne-du-Mont. The choir, under these conditions, was a 
little church within a church; it was generally raised several 
steps above the rest of the building, so that the people could 
hardly see the officials, save through the grilles of the doors 
or when the latter mounted the gallery of the loft, there to 
read the epistle or gospel. 

Were the choirs already inclosed at the time of Philip 
Augustus, at the time when the great gothic churches were 
everywhere being built? On this point VioUet-le-Duc ad- 
vances a theory which most archeologists have accepted and 
repeated without much reflection. According to him, when 
the bishops constructed cathedrals — that is, at the close of 
the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth centuries — 
they did it in opposition to the monastic spirit; they wanted 
the church to be really the home of the people, open even 



118 SOCIAL FRANCE 

to popular assemblies, and wished the faithful to be in con- 
tinuous touch with the clergy; therefore, no inclosures, no 
lofts. These could only have been put in later on, in the 
second half of the thirteenth century or in the fourteenth 
century, after long dissension between the bishops and their 
canons, the latter seeking for independence and wanting to 
be entirely shut off from the worshipers. 

Viollet-le-Duc is a very learned architect and a designer 
much above the average, but as an historian he must be taken 
cautiously. His theories must be tested; this one seems un- 
tenable ! At all times canons of cathedral churches have con- 
sidered these edifices, and especially the choir, as their ex- 
clusive domain, and one must remand the theory of the demo- 
cratic tendencies of the bishops who built our cathedrals 
to the realm of fiction. If it is true that the chapters did 
not build the inclosures and the lofts of stone before the 
end of the thirteenth century, there is nothing against be- 
lieving that before that time the canons surrounded them- 
selves with inclosures of wood or of tapestries and drap- 
eries, which screened them from the sight of the people. 
In the sources of the time of Philip Augustus, there is fre- 
quent mention of the dorsalia, or of the cloths suspended in 
the choir behind the seats of the canons. Everything leads 
one to think that, from the very time that the construction 
of the cathedrals began, the canons had the idea that the choir 
was a sacred place, reserved to the officials and forbidden 
to the laity, an idea which the permanent partitions of 
stone later expressed and materialized in a most significant 
way. 

They also wished to be in their own quarters outside of 
the church, in the cloister. When one speaks of the chapters 
of cathedrals and of collegiate churches, the word cloister has 
two meanings. It indicates either a building adjoining a 
church, a gallery of arcades, square or rectangular in form, 
analogous to the cloisters of the abbeys and like them serving 
as a promenade for the canons — such, for example, as the still 
existing cloisters of the cathedrals of Rouen, Laon, Noyon, 
and Saint Lizier; or (and this is the most common meaning 
in the sources- of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries) 
it simply designates an inclosure, real or imaginary, within 



THE CANON 119 

which are the private houses of the canons. These inclosures 
contained varying amounts of land, sometimes an entire quar- 
ter of a city. None but canons' houses were allowed within 
them, though not all canons' houses were situated there. 
There were some which were outside the cloister proper, 
though enjoying the same rights. Under Philip Augustus, 
as uuader his predecessors and successors, all the canons of 
Paris were required to have their lodgings in the cloister 
situated north and east of Notre-Dame; in the beginning 
of the fourteenth century, the cloister of the Cite contained 
only thirty-seven canons' houses, although the canons were 
almost sixty in number. 

What characterized the cloisters of chapters is that they 
had the privilege of immunity. This immunity was clearly 
defined in a bull of Innocent III given to the canons of Laon 
in 1206, which in turn is merely a confirmation of a bull of 
Pope Calixtus II of 1123. Neither the power of the king 
nor that of the bishop could be exercised in the limits of the 
cloister, where the houses of the brotherhood were found. 
No one save the dean of the chapter, and he only after a 
consultation with the canons and in accordance with their 
decision, had the right to enter it and arrest any one. In 
1200, Philip Augustus solemnly confirmed the liberty and 
immunity of the cloister of Paris and threatened any one 
who should violate it with the direst penalties. Naturally, 
the canons everywhere reached out to appropriate the build- 
ings embraced within the inclosure, and ecclesiastical author- 
ity at least tried to exclude from the cloister the kind of 
inhabitants that tend- ^ to compromise its religious character. 
In 1203, the chapter v^f Saint-Spire of Corbeil decided that 
the cloister could not be inhabited by a Jew. A bull of Pope 
Lucius III, of 1183, informs us that the cloister of Saint- 
Pierre, at Troyes, counted among its proprietors some lay- 
men who rented their houses to minstrels, actors, innkeepers, 
and even to lewd women. The pope ordered the proprietors 
to occupy their houses themselves or to rent them to mem-' 
bers of the clergy. Presently, the greatest possible precau- 
tions were taken to prevent even the houses of laity in the 
vicinity of the cloister from being a cause of scandal to the 
canons within the inclosure. 



120 SOCIAL FRANCE 

In 1223, a citizen, Etienne Berout, wanted to build a house 
in Paris fronting upon a cloister of Notre-Dame. The bishop 
intervened and imposed the following conditions on him: 
He must not, without the express authorization of the chap- 
ter, erect a building more than six feet above the cloister's 
inclosure ; he must take good care to put no window or open- 
ing in the wall which overlooked the cloister, save a dormer 
window, closed, barred, and high enough so that one could 
not from it look down into the cloister. The lateral walls 
of the new structure should get light through the same kind 
of window. In return for the graciousness which the canons 
showed him by letting him carry his building six feet above 
the wall, he agreed to give the chapter a sum of one hundred 
Parisian sous (twelve hundred francs). The charter which 
tells of this arrangement proves that the cloister of the 
chapter of Paris was, under Philip Augustus, already inclosed 
by a wall. But this was not the case everywhere at that 
time ; the cloister of the canons of Chartres, for example, was 
not walled until the middle of the thirteenth century. The 
custom of surrounding the space reserved for canons' houses 
by a continuous wall had many reasons, especially the neces- 
sity of defending this place of refuge against the lay powers, 
and even against the bishop, and also the need of defining 
the precise extent of the territory under the immediate juris- 
diction of the chapter. 

A peculiarly rare document gives us a glimpse of the 
interior of a canon's house. In 1220, the dean and the chap- 
ter of Saint-Pierre-en-Pont at Orleans, in consideration of a 
rental of fifteen Parisian sous (about one hundred and eighty 
francs), rented a furnished house situated in the cloister to 
a nephew of one of the canons. The enumeration of these 
furnishings is instructive. There are: linens — two table- 
cloths, two towels, six sheets; furniture — six coffers or chests, 
four beds with four blankets and five pillows, three chairs, 
two tables ; utensils — three copper cauldrons, one bronze caul- 
dron, one bronze plate, one iron plate, three drinking glasses, 
one trivet, one fireiron with nippers, two mortars with three 
pestles, a series of receptacles for measuring grains 
and liquids, and finally a pail with a cord. If that 
is all the furniture of a canon, it must be said that, at 



THE CANON 121 

least in a small provincial chapter, there was not much 
luxury. 



The canon is, however, a person of high position in the 
social world, and the chapter of which he is a member forms 
a real collective seigniory. It has a chief, who is elected 
by all the canons, and who usually has the title of dean 
(decanus) ; sometimes, however, — as at Soissons, Reims, 
Maguelonne, — that of provost. A dean or provost of a 
chapter is a very potent person, capable of coping with a 
bishop. He personifies the judicial power of a chapter, and 
can, like the bishop, have his tribunal, his sphere of power. 
His election sometimes gives rise to incidents which anger 
the chapter and which carry their reverberation far beyond 
the cathedral church. We shall mention only one case. 

In 1218, the cardinal legate, Robert of Courgon, came to 
Amiens, visited the chapter, and found at its head a dean 
named Simon, who was uneducated and unworthy in other 
respects. He deposed Simon and, greatly irritated at the 
canons for making such a choice, he deprived them of the 
right of naming a successor. This right he reserved to the 
pope. Hardly had he left Amiens before the canons, little 
caring to obey, came together to elect. But, as it often hap- 
pened, they were divided: the majority voted for a canon 
of the seigniorial house of Roye; the minority for a well- 
known teacher and preacher, the learned Jean Halgrin of 
Abbeville. Out of this came quarrels and lawsuits. The 
inajority, which had on its side the common law, carried its 
cause before the archbishop of Reims, the judge regular; the 
minority, which believed it had made the better choice, ad- 
dressed itself to Pope Honorius III. 

The papacy, which was sustaining the universities against 
the bishops, also had reasons for interfering in the affairs 
of the chapters, and thus extending its authority over them 
at the expense of that of the bishops and of the metro- 
politans. Honorius III first delegated the bishop of Arras 
to settle the differences; then he decided on a more radical 
measure: he cancelled the election by the majority of the 
canons of Amiens and, by virtue of his office, he invested 



122 SOCIAL FRANCE 

Jean Halgrin with the deanship, ordering the abbot of Saint- 
Victor to install him. There was a furious outcry of the 
canons, one of them, a provost of the chapter, directing the 
resistance. When the abbot of Saint-Victor arrived at 
Amiens, the provost received him with the most vigorous pro- 
tests and claimed that the bull of the pope had been secured, 
and even influenced in its form, by the lies of intriguers; he 
appealed to a pope better informed. But the delegate of 
Honorius did not consider this appeal of any account, and, 
seeing that the recalcitrants would not give ear to anything, 
he even excommunicated the canon who was the author of 
the protest. Excommunicate an appellant ! this was a serious 
step, out of which came a new suit. The adversaries of 
Halgrin filed a complaint at Rome against the abbot of Saint- 
Victor, and another suit grew out of the first. The question 
was whether the provost and his partizans were excommuni- 
cated before or after the time of his appeal. The pope was 
obliged to ask the dean of the church of Soissons to make 
a careful inquiry into this special point before giving his 
final decision of the main question. 

Meanwhile, the candidate of the minority of Amiens, Jean 
Halgrin, impatient to see things terminated and to enjoy 
his deanship, arrived at Rome. He came before the pope 
and pleaded his own cause with the skill of a man accus- 
tomed as preacher to impose his own opinion on his hearers; 
he would either resign the deanship or the papacy must 
energetically support, him against his enemies and, without 
taking account of any appeal and without any other inquiry 
or suit and despite any opposition and all dilatory tactics, 
must maintain the choice it had made of him. Brought to the 
wall, Honorius III refused to accept the resignation of a 
doctor so universally renowned for his eloquence, his knowl- 
edge, and his virtue. An attempt to prove that the Holy 
See was deceived by a lie is an insult to its dignity. And 
on November 22, 1218, by an energetic act which was not 
characteristic of him, Honorius wrote to the abbot of Sainte- 
Genevieve, the principal archdeacon of Paris, and to Doctor 
Peter of Capua, quashing all pending eases, revoking the 
order he had given to start new ones, and resolutely main- 
tained Jean Halgrin of Abbeville in the deanship of Amiens. 



THE CANON 123 

The episode is instructive; it proves two things: first, that 
the place of dean of a chapter stirred up many ambitions; 
and, second, that the court of Rome made itself sole and 
supreme judge of the differences between canons. The 
authority of a bishop would previously have sufficed to de- 
cide them. Here is another manifestation of the new law. 

The dignity of dean was as lucrative as honorable, for, 
in prebends as well as in distributions, he had always a right 
to a double share. This dignity was in itself so considerable 
that certain chapters considered it dangerous; they took pre- 
cautions against the chief they had chosen. At Noyon, 
according to a statute of 1208, the dean, before receiving 
the obedience of the canons, must take a solemn oath. He 
swears to conform to a whole series of precise prescriptions 
and prohibitions which are imposed on him. He will con- 
tinuously be in residence, he will not accept any functions 
detrimental to the community, he will not hold two positions 
in the chapter, he will not oppose the execution of the stat- 
utes which control the partition of the prebends; at harvest 
time, he will not go into the barns of the chapter and obtain 
procurations — that is to say, take meals at the expense of 
the local officers of the inhabitants; he will not suspend a 
canon and seize his prebend without having consulted the 
chapter ; he will not receive clerics into the choir without the 
permission of the chapter. In brief, the canons do not wish 
their dean to become a sort of absolute ruler. He must al- 
ways act with the approbation of his colleagues and he must 
not consider the goods of the chapter as his private property. 
But, on the other hand, they recognize these his rights : he is 
the natural judge of the other canons and he exercises the 
cure of their souls. He is at once the magistrate and the 
priest of the community. 

Under the dean, in the second rank, was the cantor, charged 
with the important service of choral exercises, of policing 
the church, and of supervising the clergy outside of the 
chapter. He carried a baton as a mark of his dignity. 

A third dignitary was especially charged with the equip- 
ment and the maintenance of the establishment; he was the 
treasurer, called the chamberlain in certain chapters. He 
was the manager of the chapter, the minister of the finances 



124 SOCIAL FRANCE 

of the seigniory. He had charge of the capitular treasure, 
not only the funds, but also the objects of value and the 
archives. 

At the end of the twelfth century, the treasurers or cham- 
berlains of many collegiate churches found their task greatly 
lightened by the creation of the new offices of church- 
wardens, matricularii, or of keepers, custodes. These, with 
their assistants, were charged with the repairing, mending, 
presenting of objects used in the ceremonies in the choir, 
with lighting the candles, ringing the bells, and guarding 
the church. They were both sacristans and beadles. The 
institution of churchwardens at the time of Philip Augustus 
is revealed especially by two documents r an instrument of 
Eudes of Sully, bishop of Paris in 1204, and a decree of 
1221 by the chapter of Laon. The clerical churchwardens, 
much superior in dignity to the lay churchwardens, partici- 
pated in the honorary and pecuniary privileges of the canons. 
They officiated in the choir and took part in the distributions ; 
but all these guardians were obliged to sleep by turns in the 
church and were responsible for anything that disappeared. 

Finally, the ecoldtre, or chancellor, was charged with 
the double duty of sealing the charters of the chapter and 
of superintending the school of the cloister and, in general, 
all the schools of the diocese. In the church this dignitary 
was responsible for the lessons, as the cantor was for the 
chants. He was the librarian, was charged with keeping the 
books, correcting and repairing them if necessary. He was 
responsible for lessons which had been omitted by day or 
night, and was forced to read them. He examined the clergy 
charged with reading. He named and superintended the 
teachers charged with instruction. His strict duty was to 
be continually in residence, and to become a priest within 
the year in which he undertook his duties. This, at least, 
is what was exacted from the chancellor of the cathedral of 
Noyon at the opening of the thirteenth century, according 
to a document which carefuUy enumerates all his duties. 



Ordinarily, the seals of chancellors picture them in the 
customary way, holding a book. But Manasses, the chan- 



THE CANON 125 

cellor of Amiens, sealing a charter of 1207, did not hesitate 
to have himself represented in the attitude and occupation 
which, without doubt, pleased him best; he appeared in 
hunting costume, on horseback, with a bird on his wrist and 
a dog following him. This chancellor, like so many other 
canons and dignitaries of a chapter, was evidently a noble, 
who had the tastes of his class and led a noble's life. With 
this characteristic seal, we can compare that of the chapter 
of Eoye in Picardy, which gives no indication whatever of 
ecclesiastical life; quite the contrary. These canons, mani- 
festly warlike like all Picards, in 1211 wished to be pictured 
as knights at a gallop, with halberts, round casques, bucklers, 
and proudly waving banners. 

Here we are far removed from the choir-stall and the altar. 
It is because, at the end of the twelfth century, the tendency 
of representatives of the large seigniorial houses to enter the 
churches of the canons was an accomplished fact. The chap- 
ters then recruited themselves in aristocratic circles, not only 
because the lay lords brought influence to bear on the nomi- 
nations of canons through the bishop or dean, but also 
because they directly controlled a number of prebends in all 
parts of France. There were canonships which, through a 
more or less dissembled hereditary right, devolved upon the 
clerical members of high baronial families. At Paris, to 
take one example only, the collation of the prebend of the 
chapter of Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre — that is to say, the nomi- 
nation of canons — was in 1209 regulated as follows: until 
his death, the bishop of Beauvais, Philip of Dreux, cousin 
of Philip Augustus, was to have the right of bestowing 
prebends; after him this right was to be exercised alter- 
nately by the bishop of Paris and by Eobert, Count of Dreux. 
The sons of noble families were not content with filling the 
chapters; they shamelessly accumulated the capitular digni- 
ties. One of the first ministers of Philip Augustus, "William 
of Champagne, nicknamed " of the white hands," who died 
as archbishop of Reims and cardinal, had commenced as a 
youth by holding livings in many chapters at once; he was 
simultaneously canon of Cambrai and Meaux, provost of the 
cathedrals of Soissons and of Troyes and of the collegiate 
chapter of Saint-Quiriaee of Provins. This accumulation 



126 SOCIAL FRANCE 

was formally prohibited by the canons, but law did not exist 
for the powerful house of Champagne. When the great 
feudal houses set such an example, the small nobles in the 
lost corners of remote provinces did not hesitate to practise 
the same abuses to their own profit. 

It was not only the feudal spirit which reigned in these 
chapters; even feudal practices came to prevail in them. In 
certain respects, the relations of the dignitaries among them- 
selves, and especially to the bishops, were relations of vassals 
to a suzerain. A curious document, which was written be- 
tween 1197 and 1208, gives the official status of the vassals 
of Paris at the time of Philip Augustus. There we read as 
follows : 

"The dean of l,he church of Paris is the liegeman of the bishop 
save for the fealty due the chapter. The cantor of Paris is the 
liegeman of the bishop, and promises him fealty. The chancellor 
of Paris is the liegeman of the bishop and also promises him fealty. 
All the archdeacons of the church of Paris are the liegemen of the 
bishop and are sworn to him. The chaplain of the bishop is also 
his liegeman. The dean of the chapter of Saint-Marcel is the liege- 
man of the bishop for his deanery. It is the same in the case of 
the deans of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois and Saint-Cloud." 

So all these persons in the church were bound to the 
bishop by a feudal tie, by liege homage, and, as a result, 
they swore to the bishop with the ceremonial used for the 
investiture of vassals. One might call it a hierarchy of 
barons. 

Was not this a violation of the spirit and the institutions 
of the church and of ecclesiastical laws? Without doubt. 
The church could not properly allow the chaplains and the 
deans of chapters to be vassals of the bishops, as is proven at 
Noyon, for example, by the statute of May, 1208, in which 
the dean was expressly prohibited from doing homage to the 
bishop or from accepting any fief from him. But the cus- 
toms of the time and the influence of the environment were 
stronger than all prohibitions. The canons were petty lords, 
many of whom lived as lords in spite of the laws, and the 
chapters seemed impregnated with the habits and ideas of 
feudalism. That is why the preachers and the councils of 



THE CANON 127 

the time of Philip Augustus denounced the worldly behavior 
of certain of these bodies and the scandalous lives of their 
members. 



None the less, public opinion considered the canon charged 
with a duty, the social usefulness of which was of the high- 
est order. The piety of the faithful continued to manifest 
itself by gifts of land or money to chapters, or even by the 
foundation of new collegiate churches or new communities of 
canons. Rich and devout individuals did not content them- 
selves with founding chaplaincies or enlarging the funds 
for distributions of celebrated churches; they created chap- 
ters designed to pray for the safety of their souls. That 
is what, for example, Gautier, a bishop of Nevers, did in 
1201 when he made Saint-Leger of Tannay, which before 
had been a simple parish church, a collegiate church. The 
act of this foundation has come down to us, and it is inter- 
esting as it shows how they proceeded in the time of Philip 
Augustus to change a parish church into a chapter and 
cures into canons. 

People did not confine themselves to enriching chapters 
already in existence or to establishing new ones. As it was 
of general interest that the office of public prayer in the 
larger churches be accomplished with care and by persons 
worthy of this high mission, it was considered important 
that the canons should lead an edifying life conformable 
to the law of their institution. Therefore, public opinion 
obliged ecclesiastical authority to make frequent reforms in 
the organization of chapters. 

These decrees of reform emanating from the pope, from 
the bishops, or from the chapters themselves, began appearing 
in great numbers in the ecclesiastical cartularies at the end 
of the twelfth and, the beginning of the thirteenth centuries. 
Some had only a restricted bearing; they only imposed par- 
tial reforms. Others, on the contrary, aimed at a general 
reorganization of a community. At Paris, the chapter of 
Notre-Dame saw its ancient constitution more or less modi- 
fied by reforms of 1204, of 1208, of 1211, of 1213, and of 
1216, and the movement for reform extended to the chapters 



128 SOCIAL FRANCE 

dependent on the cathedral — at Saint-Germain I'Auxerrois 
in 1209, at Saint-Cloud in 1204, at Saint-Mareel in 1205, at 
Saint-Martin of Champeaux in Brie in 1205, at Saint-Thomas- 
du-Louvre in 1209, at Saint-Merry in 1219, Outside of Paris, 
and from one end of France to the other, we see the same 
effort to regularize the lives of canons and put the constitu- 
tions of chapters into harmony with the needs of the church 
and with the requirements of the faithful. For the cathedral 
of Noyon, statutes came almost without interruption each 
year, from 1183 to 1218. At Chartres, there were rules in 
1208 and in 1222. At Saint-Spire of Corbeil, there were those 
of 1191, 1203, and 1208 ; at Bayonne, that of 1188 ; at Laon, 
those of 1201 and of 1219 ; at Saint-Salvi of AIM, the reform 
was in 1212 ; at the chapter of Saint-Corentin at Quimper, ini 
1223, at Saint-Pierre of Troyes in Champagne, in 1183, etc. 
This enumeration of dates and of localities, taken at random 
from the whole range of territory, is of interest in itself, as it 
shows how seriously the age of Philip Augustus sought to 
secure order, peace, and regularity of conduct in the chap- 
ters, and how widespread this movement was. 

All these statutes resemble each other; as is natural, be- 
cause the spirit of reform everywhere attacked the same 
abuses and tried to introduce the same reforms. There were 
measures to force the canons to be in residence, to do their 
duties, to distribute the prebends more equitably, to regulate 
the rights of the dignitaries and the relations of the canons 
to the bishop, to create new offices, to organize the administra- 
tion of the domains of the chapter on a better basis, and 
to define accurately the method of electing officials, espe- 
cially the dean. It is by the study of these documents that 
one can discover the defects of the capitular regime and 
the more or less well-founded criticism to which it gave rise. 
But it was useless to multiply the rules and prohibitions, for 
customs and habits were stronger than the law. All that 
public opinion rebuked in the canons, all the vices of the 
institution arose from the fact that a chapter was at the 
same time a sacred body and a temporal seigniory, a college 
of priests, charged with celebrating religious offices, and 
an association of proprietors, interested in making their 
capital and lands yield good returns. The increasing recruit- 



THE CANON 129 

ing of the chapters from aristocratic circles and the influence 
of the environment too often made these sons of nobles, 
tonsured and provided with a prebend, forget the religious 
character of their positions and to see only the financial and 
feudal side. 

Bishops, popes, and councils strove to bring the over- 
worldly canons back to the observance of their religious 
duties, to remind them that they were members of the clergy 
and that they should have the appearance and habits of 
such. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, Stephen, 
Bishop of Mende, wrote a curious letter to Rome in which 
he strongly complained of the irregular life of his canons. 
" They are the reason," he said, " why the church has be- 
come an object of derision for the entire population of my 
diocese, and your Holiness must finally reform this state 
of affairs." The deans of the chapters were themselves 
obliged to point out the evil and to demand that it be reme- 
died. In 1183, the dean of the cathedral of Troyes denounced 
the canons of his church, who refused ordination, to the bishop 
and to Pope Lucius III: they failed to do their duties and 
persisted in using the priests outside of the chapter as sub- 
stitutes. The pope ordered the bishop of Troyes to excom- 
municate the canons who refused to become priests, and they 
decided that in the future no stranger would be received at 
the high altar to celebrate mass. 

The council of Paris, of 1212, and that of Montpellier, 
held in 1214, have left several rules relating especially to 
the canons, and the accusations against them are instructive. 
First, the clergy lived and dressed too luxuriously — they wore 
red or green clothes, slippers, and short, flowing cloaks; 
on horseback they used golden bits and spurs ; they had hawks 
in their houses and they carried falcons on their arms; in 
short, externally, they were like laymen. All these abuses 
must cease. In the cloister, where the houses of the canons 
were located, meetings for games and debauchery were held. 
This practice was formally prohibited. The canons were for- 
bidden, under pain of excommunication, to hold several 
benefices and were ordered to rid themselves of the extra ones 
they possessed within two months. Certain chapters had 
ignorant or incapable persons over them, because they in- 



130 SOCIAL FRANCE 

sisted on taking the dean and other dignitaries from amongst 
themselves; if men who were capable of filling these offices 
were not found in the community, they must choose outsiders 
as officers. And the election must be honestly conducted; 
care must be taken to publish the day on which it was to 
be held, and to warn the absent canons, so that they could 
come and vote. Finally, members of chapters were absolutely 
prohibited from going into any kind of trade, from lending 
on security, and from practising usury. 

This last prohibition was not purposeless. Many docu- 
ments prove that rich chapters lent their capital at high 
interest and practised certain banking operations with profit. 
The chapter of Notre-Dame of Paris seems to have been par- 
ticularly rich. In 1216, it paid three hundred and sixty 
Parisian livres (almost forty thousand francs) for a golden 
vase ornamented with precious stones that an archbishop 
of Cologne had put on sale. From an act of 1204, it is clear 
that the canons lent money to the citizens of Paris. One of 
these, owing one hundred and thirty livres, having died, his 
widow paid thirty livres down; for the rest of the debt the 
chapter took the booth of a money-changer on the Grand 
pont, which she owned, as security. The same canons added 
the profits of agricultural enterprise to their financial ven- 
tures; they undertook large operations in the clearing of 
lands in the diocese of Paris, which brought them into trouble 
with the foresters of the king after 1185. The history of 
the chapter of Arras, under the administration of Raoul of 
Neuville, between 1203 and 1221, also puts beyond doubt the 
fact that, under the pretext of sales and the levying of tithes, 
the canons made loans at interest and realized considerable 
profits, which, after the death of the bishop who encouraged 
these operations, caused a number of lawsuits. The chapters 
clung to money, but they also clung to land; they did not 
neglect any means of enlarging their domains; they paid 
a good figure for land which was not given to them, and, 
when an important acquisition was at stake, all methods were 
fair in their eyes. In 1216, the canons of Saint-Martin of 
Tours, proprietors of the seigniory of Chablis and of its 
vineyards, found a chance to annex the lands of a certain 
Guy of Montreal; but the purchase price was considerable — 



THE CANON 131 

two thousand livres (two hundred and fifty thousand francs) 
— and the chapter did not have the necessary funds on hand ; 
it did not hesitate to sell a part of the gold which covered 
the table of the high altar of Saint-Martin for seven hundred 
livres; a sad extremity, no doubt, but they thought that the 
piety of the faithful would make up for it. 

Chapters were like individuals; there were some which 
understood how to manage their fortunes and who were 
prosperous; others, on the contrary, who could not make both 
ends meet. They were debtors instead of creditors and some- 
times even found themselves bankrupt. Such was the situa- 
tion of the chapter of Maguelonne in 1197. We know this 
from a letter of Pope Celestine III, which enumerated the 
causes of the failure: bad harvests of grain and wine, fre- 
quent private wars, and incessant quarrels between the fac- 
tions among the canons. To help the chapter out of this bad 
situation, the pope allowed its dean, the provost of Mague- 
lonne, to take charge of all the churches which were subject 
to the community : that is, to confiscate their revenues, gradu- 
ally to cancel the debt, '' so heavy," says the pontifical bull, 
' ' that the canons could not support its weight any longer, ' * 

It is easy to see that money played a predominant part 
in the documents relating to the canons. A very instructive 
study could be made of the division of prebends among the 
members of chapters. Ecclesiastical authority was constantly 
obliged to take measures to prevent the canons from consid- 
ering their prebends as their own property, which they could 
dispose of to related clerics. It became necessary to force 
holders of prebends to participate in the expenses of the 
community, for they found it convenient to take their rev- 
enues, and evade the expenses which the services and the 
administration of the domain entailed. Chapters had, at the 
end of a certain number of years, to be forced to make a new 
distribution of prebends; for the value of these parcels of 
land and revenues diminished or increased considerably in 
the course of time and equality of the holders of prebends 
no longer prevailed. It was even necessary, from time to 
time, to force the chapters to increase the number of their 
members and to divide their prebends; for, the capitular do- 
main growing or increasing in value, those who enjoyed it 



132 SOCIAL FEANCE 

had a very natural tendency to keep the numbers small 
in order to get a larger prebend. This was why, in 1205, 
the church of Notre-Dame of Paris decided that the prebends 
of the vassal chapter of Saint-Martin of Champeaux, in Brie, 
should be cut in two. The value of each prebend had become 
over fifty livres: that is, a canon of Saint-Martin had over 
seven thousand five hundred francs of income. It was found 
that, in comparison with this revenue, there was too small 
a number of canons. Naturally, those who were in posses- 
sion objected; they were calmed by the concession that the 
doubling of the prebends should not take place until the 
death or retirement of the incumbents. This proves that, even 
in the middle ages, administrative reforms were effected 
without brutality. 

Really pious souls, austere consciences, were indignant at 
seeing communities of canons so much absorbed in temporal 
interests, in the form of lands and money. The preachers 
of the time of Philip Augustus stigmatized the eagerness with 
which canonships were pursued. This race for prebends 
angered them. " The candidates," said one of them, " fall 
into a delirium when there is a vacancy, as mad dogs do when 
the course of the moon wanes." Preachers thundered 
against the cupidity of the clerics who held several prebends 
in spite of the prohibitions of the councils. Prevostin of 
Cremona, chancellor of the church of Paris, and himself a 
canon, made this confession: 

" We clerics, we want everything, spiritual treasures and temporal 
treasures. But the idol, Dagon, falls and the law remains firm. 
Time passes and eternity remains. We seek to raise up Dagon and 
make the temporal equal to, and even put it above the spiritual. . . . 
What can one say upon seeing the mass sung for money in the 
house of God?" 

Another contemporary of Philip Augustus, Elinand, the 
converted trouvere, who had become a monk of Citeaux, 
probably alluded to the worldly canons when he indignantly 
wrote of priests who appeared in public dressed like women, 
" with their hair curled and well parted, their faces freshly 
shaven, their skins polished with pumice-stone, bareheaded, 
bare-shouldered, tattooed, with shod hands and gloved feet." 



THE CANON 133 

[Sic] Other preachers denounced the bad spirit, the spirit 
of insubordination among the canons: 

"If their bishop decides to rebuke them, they immediately say 
that the right to correct them belongs only to the dean of the 
chapter. If the dean wishes to reprimand them, they reply that 
they are under the jurisdiction of the entire chapter and not under 
that of the dean." 

And in this instance the preachers, who had the habit of 
striking heavily and of enlarging on the truth in order to 
make an impression, did not exaggerate. The canons of the 
middle ages were not strongly addicted to obedience and peace ; 
one must admit that cloisters and even churches did not seem 
like sanctuaries of peace and of peaceful seclusion. Men 
quarreled in them as much as elsewhere, and often even came 
to blows. Most of the clerics, sons of nobles as we have said, 
having come out of military surroundings, had the disposi- 
tion of their class and were very bellicose. 

We shall not speak here of the wars which chapters in the 
cities or in the country had to wage against great and petty 
barons, who constantly tried to invade their domains, or 
against the citizens, who sought freedom from ecclesiastical 
seigniory. These will be considered later. It is enough, for 
the moment, to note that the necessity of defense against 
the attacks of the castellans and the barons gave a peculiar 
character to certain communities of canons. Especially in 
the rugged and mountainous country, or in provinces lack- 
ing a high suzerain strong enough to police the district, chap- 
ters were constantly exposed to pillage by the seigniors, were 
drawn into war by a stronger force, and were therefore 
organized accordingly. These canons had nothing ecclesias- 
tical about them but the tonsure ; they were veritable soldiers. 
Ordinarily of a rich and noble family, they were ever ready 
to call together their kinsmen and repulse their enemies. In 
reality, they were chiefs of bands which were not content to 
be on the defensive, but avenged unexpected insults and in 
their turn attacked the castellans of the neighborhood. At 
the time of Philip Augustus, the most notable example of 
such chapters was that of Saint- Julien of Brioude; there 
were several of the same kind in Auvergne, the land of 



134 SOCIAL FRANCE 

feudal anarchy par excellence. The canons of Brioude were 
notorious and their conduct and military life caused great 
scandal. Philip of Harvengt, the abbot of Bonne-Esperance, 
in his book, De continentia clericorum, mentioned them as 
the strangest class of the warrior-priest. He described them 
as coming out of the choir, where they had just sung psalms 
and hymns, and running to put on helmets and breastplates 
to battle on the highways. " This abnormal situation," he 
said, '* was well known to bishops and popes, but it had to 
be tolerated ; the canons were compelled to defend themselves 
or the rapacity of the laity would have reduced the church 
to nothing." 

Exclude these exceptional communities, and consider only 
the chapters under usual conditions and the relations of 
canons to other members of ecclesiastical society! It must 
still be admitted that quarrels were frequent and intermi- 
nable ; indeed, that the state of war was practically permanent. 
It is not to be wondered at that churches sometimes had the 
appearance of strong castles. 



One would never finish if he undertook to write the his- 
tory of all the conflicts which occurred in cathedral and 
collegiate churches at the end of the twelfth and the begin- 
ning of the thirteenth centuries. It was not, however, a 
condition peculiar to this period of the history of France. 
Many of these quarrels had commenced long before the reign 
of Philip Augustus and ended a long time after. There 
were some that lasted almost as long as the medieval period 
itself; generations of canons transmitted them like an in- 
heritance. These clerics quarreled for centuries because, in 
spite of all the pronouncements of justice and of all the 
compromises, they never, at the bottom of their hearts, re- 
nounced the exercise of what they considered a right. In 
cities where several chapters existed there were conflicts 
between the various communities of canons. Often it was a 
cathedral which sought to have its preeminence recognized 
by the ordinary collegiate churches, which themselves desired 
independence: it was the hostility of the sovereign and his 



THE CANON 135 

vassal. It suffices to see what happened in Troyes, in Cham- 
pagne, in 1189. The canons of the cathedral Saint-Pierre were 
fighting with the canons of Saint-Loup. The latter finally rec- 
ognized their dependence and signed a treaty of peace. They 
would assist at the high mass of Saint-Pierre on the four 
great feast days of the year as a sign of their dependence; 
but in return, by way of indemnification, the chamberlain of 
Saint-Pierre would pay five sous after each assistance to 
the cellarer of Saint-Loup. At Chalons-sur-Marne the canons 
of Notre-Dame paid a quit-rent to the cathedral chapter of 
Saint-Etienne, in accordance with an arrangement concluded 
in 1187. They were also constrained to assist in the proces- 
sions of the cathedral and to attend the services which were 
celebrated there on certain great feast days. In return, the 
canons of Saint-!fitienne would come to Notre-Dame on the 
four feasts of the Virgin. In 1206, these same canons of the 
cathedral of Chalons made a strange use of their priority; 
they ordered the demolition of the church of the vassal chap- 
ter of Saint-Nicolas, on the ground that it was too near the 
cathedral. The canons of Saint-Nicolas sent the pope a vig- 
orous complaint, and Eome ordered the chapter of Saint- 
Etienne to rebuild the church on the same place as the old' 
building. It was imperative to keep order among these 
clerics and to see that the small were not oppressed or ab- 
sorbed by the great. At Etampes, where there was no 
cathedral, the fight between the chapter of Notre-Dame and 
of Sainte-Croix lasted through the whole reign of Philip 
Augustus and far beyond it; popes, kings, and archbishops 
exhausted themselves in vain efforts to restore peace. How- 
ever, an agreement was reached in 1210, in the terms of which 
Sainte-Croix saw its defeat. Money matters had antagonized 
the two communities; they quarreled over the revenues of 
the parish. The agreement stipulated that the priests of 
Sainte-Croix should never ring bells for matins; that they 
should never accept gifts from the parishioners of Notre- 
Dame, that they should not make Holy-bread, that they should 
not visit the sick, that the cantor of Notre-Dame should have 
a good prebend at Sainte-Croix, and that the parish rights 
of the new town of Etampes should belong exclusively to 
Notre-Dame. It was Notre-Dame of Etampes which was the 



136 SOCIAL FEANCE 

chief chapter, the sovereign power; to her must come the 
honor — and also the money. 

Let us now enter a cathedral church; we shall find many- 
kinds of disputes between members of the same community. 
We already know that the religious services were confided 
to two distinct personnels; side by side with the body of 
canons lived a college of priests or chaplains, charged with 
saying the innumerable masses founded by individuals, and 
even permitted to officiate at the high altar. But the canons 
did not agree with the chaplains; the priests of the choir 
were rivals of those of the chapels or the altar, who, having 
on the whole the heaviest burden to carry, tried to exempt 
themselves from the jurisdiction of the chapter and to mo- 
nopolize certain revenues. There were collegiate churches, 
like that of Saint-Spire of Corbeil, where the canons and 
the chaplains were always in a state of hostility ; and decrees 
like those of 1191 and 1209, and the oath required of the 
chaplains of Saint-Spire before they assumed their offices 
did not succeed in establishing harmony. 

But in the very bosom of the chapter, among the seigniors 
who held prebends, passions were strong and brutal and 
conflicts were numerous. 

Election contests were a first cause of trouble. In the 
election of high dignitaries the canons were almost always 
divided; the minority would not yield to the majority, be- 
cause in the middle ages votes were not only counted, they 
were weighed. Besides the major pars, majority, there was 
the sanior pars, the wiser party, and each party claimed to 
represent the wisest opinion. Thus there came the inter- 
minable suit in the court of Rome and, while awaiting judg- 
ment, an internal quarrel in the church itself, which often 
went as far as brawls. We have already noticed the events 
caused by the election of a dean in the chapter of Amiens. 
The animated incidents that were caused by the election of 
a mere satristan in 1186, as related by the cartulary of 
Maguelonne, are worth reading. One party of the canons 
of Maguelonne had irregularly elected a certain Guy as 
sacristan. The bishop and other canons were opposed to 
his installation. They excommunicated the intruder and his 
electors. Guy persisted in keeping the sacristy and doing 



THE CANON 137 

his duty. At the request of the bishop, the jarchbishop of 
Narbonne came to Maguelonne to reestablish order. But the 
sacristan, firmly clinging to his office, called to his aid the 
son of the count of Toulouse and the lord of Montpellier 
himself. These laymen forced their way into the hall of 
the chapter, insulted and menaced the bishop and his ad- 
herents. Pope Urban III was obliged to interfere and send 
special agents to terminate the quarrel. 

Outside of the electoral period, peace was no better 
assured, for there were disputes between canons about 
prebends and parochial .rights and opposition of the plain 
prebendaries to the dignitaries, who were accused of over- 
stepping their powers and taking revenues which ought to 
have been given to the entire community. This was why, in 
1215, the chapter of Notre-Dame of Paris was at strife with 
the chancellor, who was accused of having taken more than 
the right amount of the income from the seal of the chan- 
cellor. The most numerous and violent conflicts were those 
between the chapters and those of their number who, under 
the name of provosts, were charged with the temporal ad- 
ministration of the capitular domains. The tendency which 
in the feudal world caused all the officers and proxies of the 
lords to appropriate their offices, together with the territory 
on which the office rested, and to change their positions as 
agents and administrators into proprietorships, had also had 
its effect in these small ecclesiastical societies. The canons 
invested with provostships came to consider these their own 
property and to turn the rights and revenues, which belonged 
to the whole community, to their own profit. The community, 
having to fear complete spoliation, was obliged to counteract 
this unfortunate manifestation of the feudal spirit. It was 
compelled to reduce the provosts to their real positions, as 
agents, and to take from the recalcitrants the domains which 
they tried to appropriate. In consequence, there was serious 
strife during the whole of the twelfth century between the 
canons and their colleagues, the provosts (at Chartres, at 
the time of the celebrated Ivo of Chartres, it went as far as 
bloodshed). At the end of the twelfth century most of the 
chapters had succeeded in reclaiming their domains from the 
provosts and in confiding their administration directly to the 



138 SOCIAL FRANCE 

prebendaries themselves, either by suppressing the office of 
provosts and making the provosts simple lay agents, or by 
leaving the provosts simply a nominal authority. But at 
the time of Philip Augustus certain chapters still fought: 
for example, at Bordeaux, where the canons of the cathedral 
of Saint-Andre, in 1210, obtained from one of their provosts 
the recognition of their rights of hunting, fishing, and justice 
on the land of the provost ; and even at Paris, where, in 1216, 
the chapter of Notre-Dame regulated the position of the 
provost and reorganized the whole administration of the do- 
main. As the stewardships became vacant, they were to be 
restored to the community, which would control them; and 
the living provosts were to have their hands tied in such 
a manner that it would be impossible to trade in the lands 
which had been intrusted to them. 

But the great subject of discord in the bosom of the 
churches, the most abundant source of conflicts, and the 
permanent cause of disorder in cathedrals was the ambiguous 
position of the bishop, who was at once the colleague and 
the superior of the canon. The cathedral belonged to the 
bishop and to the chapter; it was the undivided and limited 
territory which these two powers were obliged to share. 
Realizing the litigious and bellicose spirit of the men of the 
middle ages, one well understands that it was often the scene 
of strife. 

Formerly, the head of the diocese had full and complete 
power over the priests of the cathedral, as over those of the 
diocese ; the properties of the church were common to all 
of them; the episcopal power, spiritually as well as tem- 
porally, remained complete and absolute. But when the 
donations of the faithful had greatly increased the domain 
of the cathedral ; when, by the general law of the differentia- 
tion of organisms, the chapter had been separated from the 
bishop and capitular property from episcopal property, the 
bishop and canons gradually entered into competition. The 
chapter tried to make itself independent of the bishop first 
in temporal things, then even in spiritual things, and pres- 
ently succeeded with the aid of the popes, who, as we know, 
had an interest in diminishing the powers of the episcopacy. 
On many points the bishop and his chapter found them- 



THE CANON 139 

selves in the position of two brothers who are enemies; 
and the bitterness of family hatreds is well known. Their 
rivalry arofee from a thousand different causes, and it 
appeared in a thousand different forms. They disputed over 
everything: the church itself, its treasure, the jurisdiction 
over the parishes, the right to elect certain officials of the 
diocese especially the archdeacons, the right to designate the 
holders of prebends, the right to lay excommunications, etc. 
And in all French provinces the same antagonism produced 
the same result. One could at hazard take the most dissimilar 
regions, as remote as possible from each other; in the time 
of Philip Augustus their condition in this respect never dif- 
fered. At Bayonne, in 1198, Pope Celestine III was obliged 
to intervene to regulate the division of the revenues of the 
church between the bishop and the chapter. At Quimper, in 
1220, the strife between Bishop Renaud and the canons was 
still in an acute state, still more violent here because the two 
powers were closely associated, the bishop of Quimper being 
a real canon who took part in the daily distributions. Here, 
as almost everywhere, it was the chapter which carried the 
day. Renaud abandoned his claims to policing the choir and 
nominating the prior of the hospital, and he restored to 
the canons various objects he had appropriated. At Beau- 
vais, Bishop Philip of Dreux, in 1212, admitted that he had 
not the right to excommunicate subjects of the chapter. His 
successor. Miles of Nanteuil, in 1219, gave the canons the 
power of laying excommunications, of having them pub- 
lished in the parishes of the diocese, and assuring the exe- 
cution of them. But the officers of the bishop and the cures 
did not easily submit to the anathemas of the canons of 
Beauvais, and between 1219 and 1221 there resulted a curious 
incident. The cathedral chapter of Saint-Pierre had excom- 
municated Peter of Bury, a provost of the bishop, guilty of 
having imprisoned a sergeant of the canons. The cures of 
the different churches of Beauvais refused to publish the 
excommunication. The dean of the chapter several times 
commanded them to heed it ; finally, he summoned them to his 
presence and declared them suspended from their offices. 
' ' Take off your albs, ' ' he said to them ; ' ' you shall not take 
part in the procession." Most of them then decided to obey, 



140 SOCIAL FRANCE 

but two of them protested and appealed to the archbishop 
of Reims. The document which gives us these details is 
interesting, because it shows how far the independence and 
claims of chapters could go in certain dioceses. 

"We can continue our tour of France. At Orleans, in 1217, 
the bishop, in conflict with Philip Augustus, laid an interdict 
on his city and on his diocese. This time he was in agree- 
ment with his chapter, that of Sainte-Croix ; but the canons 
of the collegiate church of Saint-Aignan refused to observe 
the interdict, and continued to ring their bells and to open 
their church. The bishop suspended the dean of Saint- 
Aignan. A complicated suit in the court of Rome resulted. 
At Tours the archbishop was, in 1211, at strife with his 
metropolitan chapter over the ownership of a parish, and 
also with the powerful chapter of Saint-Martin, about the 
jurisdiction over the abbey of Beaulieu. This last conflict 
was permanent; in 1208, it gave rise to three lawsuits — de- 
cided at Orleans, Bourges, and Chartres. At Rouen, the 
archbishop and his chapter were at outs over certain revenues 
of the town of Dieppe. The canons laid an interdict on the 
cathedral; the matter was submitted to arbitrators, and the 
dean of the chapter ended the matter by making an apology. 
At Verdun, there was a veritable war between the dean and 
Bishop Robert : the canons did not want him as their bishop ; 
they regarded him as ignorant and unworthy. They threat- 
ened him with a suit at Rome and made him so miserable 
that, in 1217, they forced him to resign his position. At 
Bordeaux, there were frequent struggles between the arch- 
bishop and his canons; the latter, in 1181, obtained from 
the pope the right of electing their dean, and, in 1195, they 
consented to a new transaction with the archbishop. In 1188, 
the cathedral chapter of Saint-Pierre of Troyes accused the 
bishop of having taken a part of the treasure of the church, 
especially a golden chalice and a silver table. Bishop 
Manasses had to restore what he had taken. Even at Paris, 
where the two powers seemed to live in fair harmony, the 
chapter of Notre-Dame, in 1219, obtained from Honorius III 
the right to excommunicate their aggressors in case the bishop 
of Paris refused to punish them. But, to witness fierce and 
contiQuous strife and sometimes actual war between a bishop 



THE CANON 141 

and his canons, one should go to Maguelonne. There the 
provost of the chapter and the head of the diocese were at 
outs, one may say, the whole of the twelfth and thirteenth 
centuries. In 1186, one of the bishops of Maguelonne, John 
of Montlaur, a veritable tyrant, imprisoned the canons and 
beat them. Things went so far that they almost all deserted 
the cathedral, and the popes had difficulty in inducing them 
to return. 

We know enough of this to conclude. The elements of 
ecclesiastical society were in a state of war, like those of 
the lay world. Chapters, far from living in peace in the 
cathedral, too often made it a field of battle. The bishop was 
not master there: he was forced to divide his power with 
the collective seigniory of the canons, his brothers; he saw 
them grow at his expense and, little by little, appropriate his 
wealth, his jurisdiction, and his independence. 



CHAPTER V 

THE BISHOP 

After a cleric had studied and become a master of arts 
and had obtained the prebend of a canon or of some capitular 
dignity, his chief ambition was to mount a step higher and 
become a bishop. However, in the time of Philip Augustus 
the episcopate was no longer what it had been in the earlier 
centuries of feudalism. The bishops had, in great number, 
lost both their spiritual and temporal preeminence. In the 
diocese they were no longer absolute masters of all that con- 
stituted ecclesiastical society and of every form of religious 
life, as formerly they had been. The independent monas- 
teries escaped them and obeyed only the head of the order 
or the pope; chapters, as we have seen, tended to become 
independent, even disputed the cathedral with the bishops; 
the archdeacons, their chief auxiliaries, sought to take from 
them a part of the power which they had over the parish and 
its cure. Again, outside the diocese the bishops had to 
reckon with two powers, the king and the pope, who, although 
far away, governed them with an ever heavier hand. The 
pope seemed to have gained spiritually all that the bishops 
had lost in this regard. Every day the papacy interfered 
more actively in the elections, in the nominations to benefices, 
the government of the bishopric, and even in the smallest 
details of local ecclesiastical life. As episcopal jurisdiction 
was rendered almost useless by the development of the appeal 
to Rome, the Roman treasury began to exploit the bishoprics 
until the bishops complained bitterly. The interference of 
the king in the affairs of the diocese was much less frequent 
and galling. But Philip Augustus did not deprive himself 
of the satisfaction of exacting military service with great 
rigor from the bishops, and especially of subjecting them in 
pecuniary things to a system of forced requisitions, which 
caused them to cry out against the persecution. Finally, the 
bishops had always to struggle against their constant enemies : 

142 



THE BISHOP 143 

the bourgeoisie of the free towns, the feudal laity, the castel- 
lan, and the baron — aU of whom, especially in the country 
which royalty was not able to police, continually overran and 
pillaged the lands of the church and appropriated its do- 
mains, its revenues, and its episcopal rights. Thus the bishopj 
had to be constantly on the defensive, watching, as it were, 
at the breach. To sum up, it was a hard calling, and one 
which at the end of the twelfth century, it would seem, gave 
Jess power and brought less profit than in times past. 

But the importance and brilliance of the office obscured 
the unpleasant side so completely that it was still sought with 
the same avidity. Even though the authority of the bishop 
was weakened, the number of candidates did not diminish. 
The preachers of the period had not enough violent expres- 
sions with which to condemn the pursuit for a prelacy and 
the intrigues of the candidates. In the time of Philip Augus- 
tus and Innocent III money no longer played the same role 
as formerly in episcopal elections. Open, indecent simony 
was no longer possible, except in certain remote provinces, 
but the favor, influence, and recommendation of the Mng, 
of an important baron, of a great seigniorial family continued 
to show their effects. In spite of the demands of well-under- 
stood opinion, in spite of the efforts and surveillance of the 
popes, the episcopal personnel — although superior, taken as 
a whole, in its moral and intellectual worth to that of the 
preceding centuries — was far from attaining to the Christian 
ideal. The good and bad were strangely allied. In the lists 
of the French episcopate there was a curious diversity of 
types: the educated, pious theologian; the prelate or man of 
letters, who was a politician and a courtier; the turbulent 
prelate, who passed his life in a struggle; the highwayman, 
who treated his diocese like a conquered province ; the rapa- 
cious usurer, ingenious in oppressing the members of his 
diocese; the rascal, whose crimes would have dishonored the 
episcopate and the church if it were not profoundly wrong 
to judge all one class of men by these exceptions. 



The bishop of the time of Philip Augustus appears to us 
as the head of a diocese and as a great lord, holding a high 



144 SOCIAL FEANCE 

position in the hierarchy of the nobility. Like every feudal 
prince, he ruled the territory of which he was proprietor and 
suzerain, while the revenues accruing from this right and 
which came to be called " episcopal income " were truly 
seigniorial revenues. 

As proprietor, the bishop possessed directly in his domain 
parish churches, abbeys, lands, forests, houses, and serfs : that 
is to say, everything that the other barons possessed. These 
properties, like those of the king and other lords of the laity, 
were administered by officers, called provosts, mayors, deans, 
and sergeants, having the double character of public agents 
or special intendants, and at the same time that of bailiffs, 
tax-collectors, judges, and police agents. The domain pos- 
sessed by a bishop in an episcopal city was sometimes consid- 
erable. To get a clear idea of this fact we must realize that 
the bishop of Paris was almost as great a proprietor as the 
king. The bishop of Paris under Philip Augustus possessed 
in the Cite the episcopal palace and its dependencies, the 
whole he Saint-Louis, the land of the Culture, and of the 
Ville-l'Eveque, which corresponded to the land lying between 
Saint-Eoch on one side and Saint-Philippe-du-Eoule and 
Saint- Augustin on the other ; the Champeaux, comprising the 
land between Eue Saint-Honore and the Pointe Saint- 
Eustache ; the Bourg Saint-Germain, which is a long ribbon of 
land reaching from Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois almost to 
the height of Montmartre; and on the left bank the field of 
Bruneau, a plot of ground near the Eue des Noyers and the 
Eue des Carmes. An act of Philip Augustus, issued in 1222, 
shows that the bishops of Paris divided the taxes and juris- 
diction of this city with the king, and that his was by no 
means the lesser share. 

As feudal lord, the bishop also possessed fiefs and drew 
from them the revenues which every suzerain enjoyed. His 
vassals paid him homage and owed him both military and 
court service, thus forming his seigniorial tribunal. Certain 
ones among them had besides the special duty of carrying 
him upon his throne, the sedia gestatoria, when just after his 
election he made his solemn entry, traversing the city and 
arriving at the cathedral for his installation. In order to 
find an account of the great number of fiefs which were at- 



THE BISHOP 145 

tached to an episcopal suzerainty, one may, for example, 
observe the state of vassalage of the bishop of Paris as it 
was fixed in a cartulary of Notre-Dame drawn up between 
1197 and 1208. 

The feudal status of the bishop differed from that of the 
lay barons especially in two ways. First, as concerns the 
highest suzerain — that is to say, the king — ^the bishop since 
the ecclesiastical reform of the eleventh century no longer 
paid homage, but limited himself to taking the oath of fealty, 
which, however, did not exempt him from being forced to 
military or court service. Then, he was himself a suzerain 
of a special kind of vassal : he had fiefs * ' incorporeal ' ' — 
that is, he required homage of cathedral functionaries for 
their ecclesiastical benefices. He received the liege-homage of 
the dean, the cantor, the chancellor, the head chaplain, the 
churchwardens, etc. 

The bishop resembled the baron all the more, as his house, 
his private establishment — ^that is, all the arrangements for 
the maintenance of his person and his entourage, — was the 
same as that of counts, dukes, and of the king. He was 
served by the same high and petty officers. He had his 
seneschal or steward, his cupbearer, his marshal, his cham- 
berlain or treasurer, his equerry, his master of the pantry, 
secretaries, chaplains, without counting lesser offices — porters, 
builders, drivers, etc. All these functionaries, supported by 
him and lodged in the houses connected with the episcopal 
palace, served him day in, day out. But, like the high 
suzerains and the king, he had high honorary officers — ^that 
is, certain vassals of the diocese, — who, by virtue of their 
fiefs, had the right of serving him at table, at the formal 
feasts, during special solemnities, and throughout the day 
of his installation. 

Such, then, was the status, as shown by its principal char- 
acteristics and taken from the temporal point of view, of a 
bishop seen in the normal condition of his office, who, though 
being a great proprietor, was yet neither count nor duke. 
There existed prelates — like the archbishops of Reims, Vienne, 
or Aries ; like the bishops of Puy, Mende, Lodeve, Viviers, or 
Langres — who were the only suzerains of their cities. They 
accumulated pecuniary with episcopal power, and they had, 



146 SOCIAL FRANCE 

consequently, even more than their confreres, the bearing, 
authority, and resources of a great baron who is king in his 
province. There was seldom question here over the episco- 
pate, such as presented itself in a very great majority of 
dioceses where the authority of the bishop was in competi- 
tion with or dependent on that of a layman. And it would 
be interesting to see how these bishops actually lived, with 
what order, how they ordained their financial affairs, how 
their budget was regulated; in a word, to what amount the 
receipts of a bishopric could raise an episcopal fortune. 

The documents of the period of Philip Augustus are far 
from satisfying our curiosity in this regard. It has been 
attempted to fix approximately the annual income in revenue, 
grain, money, forest, and river produce which a bishop of 
Chartres received when incumbent of his extensive diocese 
in the thirteenth century, and the amount, in terms of actual 
money, was found to be five hundred thousand francs ; whi(^ 
is certainly a minimum, for one must add the revenues accru- 
ing from feudal rights and indirect taxes. Unquestionably, 
this sum of half a million is not too large in any case. One 
must think of the pace of the life which the bishops of that 
time were obliged to lead, of the frequence of journeys 
which their duties toward the king and pope imposed upon 
them, of the pecuniary demands of these two powers, and of 
the established traditions with regard to hospitality and char- 
ity. The duties of the episcopate were numerous, and, at the 
time of which we speak, the bishop did not, like his chapter, 
have sources of self-enrichment from the gifts and endow- 
ments of the faithful. The land and capital of the canons 
increased daily, while the fortune of the bishop remained 
practically stationary. He could only augment the revenues 
of the diocese by an administration at the same time energetic 
and clever, a thing in which not all prelates were gifted. 
In general, nevertheless, bishops did not die poor. Almost 
all — this is seen from the tenor of their wills and information 
from their obituaries — found means of making gifts to their 
churches, to monks, and to indigent persons. They enriched 
the treasure of their cathedrals more or less, leaving books, 
objects of great price, priestly vestments, and costly vases. 
The will of Peter of Nemours, bishop of Paris, dated June, 



THE BISHOP 147 

1218, contains a curious enumeration of objects left by him 
to Notre-Dame, Saint- Victor, and Saint-Martin of Tours: 
Spanish tapestries, coffers from Limoges, beautiful manu- 
scripts, etc. In 1181, there died at Auxerre, Bishop William 
of Toucy, whose bequests to all the chapters and to all the 
abbeys of the diocese have been enumerated at great length 
by his biographer. He left to his cathedral a silver chalice 
and basins, valuable stuffs, and a portion of his library. An- 
other bishop of Auxerre, William of Seignelay, the successor 
to Hugh of Noyers, when he quitted his bishopric for that 
of Paris in 1220, gave to his chapter rich pontifical vestments, 
a gold miter set with pearls, two silver basins goldplated, 
some cushions of beautiful work, a gold cross containing a 
relic, nine gold marks to secure a cross and chalice, houses, 
vineyards, and incomes. Moreover, adds the chronicle of 
Auxerre, his successor found all the episcopal abodes fur- 
nished and provided with an abundance of grain and wines. 
In 1180, John of Salisbury, bishop of Chartres, had be- 
queathed to his cathedral precious stuffs, a cope of great 
value, his episcopal ring, and all his library. Details of this 
kind abound in church obituaries. But one need not conclude 
that the possession of a bishopric was necessarily a guar- 
antee of wealth. These generosities before and at the time 
of death are often to be reconciled with a poor financial 
condition. The history of the bishopric of Auxerre gives us 
a proof in titie person of Hugh of Noyers, that great builder 
of fortresses. He had borrowed money from the treasury 
of the cathedral and would have restored it with usury, says 
the chronicler, if death had only left him time. As a matter 
of fact, he bequeathed this debt to his successor. 

But there were others who knew how to enrich themselves. 
Such was the case of Maurice of Sully. Son of a poor peas- 
ant of the seigniory of Sully in Orleanais, he had studied at 
the university of Paris. There he led the life of a poor 
student. It was even said that he begged his bread and 
acted as servant to rich students. Master of theology, he 
became canon and then archdeacon of Notre-Dame. His 
reputation as teacher and preacher pointed him out for 
higher positions. Elected bishop of Paris in 1160, he had 
so good a talent for managing episcopal finances that he was 



148 SOCIAL FRANCE 

able to get the money necessary for the reconstruction of his 
cathedral, and, on his death, to give a considerable amount 
of gifts to Notre-Dame: a house near the cloister, road- 
rights in the outskirts of Paris, religious ornaments, a sum 
of money for the decoration of the high altar, one hundred 
livres for roofing the cathedral, a hundred livres for poor 
clerics, a hundred livres for the canons diligent at matins, a 
hundred and ninety silver marks to buy land and vineyards, 
the usufruct of which his grandnephew was to have; to the 
abbey of Saint- Victor, nine hundred livres (more than one 
hundred and fifty thousand francs) ; to Saint-Germain- 
I'Auxerrois, forty livres, etc. Nor were the poor forgotten, 
but benefited by special bequests, the value of which is not 
known. Maurice of Sully, a type of the pious bishop having 
succeeded by his own merit , certainly possessed nothing before 
entering the church of Paris, showing that the functions of 
archdeacon and bishop enriched even those who exercised 
them honestly. 



As religious head, the bishop did not only preside over 
the cathedral services, but had charge of supervising and eon- 
trolling the conduct of priests in all the churches and in 
all the parishes of the diocese. 

It was he who named the cure of the parishes directly 
subordinate to the bishopric, or simply conferred the charge 
of souls upon the cure supported by patronage. He alone 
had power to ordain clerics and it was his duty to induce 
them to accept the priesthood. Then, having ordained and 
installed the priests, he had finally that very hard obligation 
of holding them in the narrow path : that is to say, of watch- 
ing to see that they were well taught and well behaved. 
And we can see how painful and difficult the uncouthness of 
the lower clergy rendered this part of the episcopal task. 
In order to carry it on at all, it was necessary for the bishop 
to keep himself as much as possible in contact with the min- 
isters of the parishes. Behold him, then, riding to all parts of 
his diocese in order to make his visits — that is, his tours of 
inspection of rural churches: he assembles the deans or the 
archpriests, conducts summary inquests, hears accusations 



THE BISHOP 149 

against priests, suspends, corrects, and threatens the sus- 
pected and guilty. But this work of inspector and itinerant 
judge did not suffice; the bishop could not always be off on 
long journeys, and then it was that the parish priests left 
their parishes to come to him. Every year he held a synod — 
that is, a general assembly of clerics of the diocese in the 
great hall of his palace or in the choir of the cathedral ; and 
there again he preached, gave his instructions, reprimanded, 
and punished in a way to insure the maintenance of disci- 
pline and to reform customs. 

These were both things difficult to attain, for the clerics 
of this period, by nature violent and unmanageable, would 
not accept correction easily. They resisted, especially when 
they were forbidden to keep concubines publicly; they ap- 
pealed to Rome to suspend the punishment, and even openly 
revolted. The kindest and most virtuous of the bishops of 
this time, Maurice of Sully, bishop of Paris, was himself 
in struggle against his clergy. And, as if the bishop did not 
have enough anxiety over keeping the parish priests in hand, 
he was obliged to struggle for this very control against cer- 
tain dignitaries who usurped his authority. These digni- 
taries were the archdeacons. Delegated by the bishop to help 
him in his task and to administer a part of the diocese in 
his name, the archdeacons had little by little forgotten 
that they were nothing but representatives of the episcopal 
power. They were inclined to keep the proceeds of the rev- 
enues of the diocese for themselves; they appointed, judged, 
and excommunicated cures at their pleasure, as if the arch- 
deaconry were a small-sized bishopric. This was a curious 
example of the phenomenon of feudal appropriation carried 
over into ecclesiastical society. Certain it is that the bishop, 
threatened with being deprived of his power throughout the 
diocese, had to struggle to defend himself. In many dioceses 
there was war, secret or declared, between the prelate and 
his archdeacons. In all cases there was toil and constant 
effort on the part of the bishop to keep the rights and money 
belonging to him, so that at the end of the twelfth century 
a certain number of prelates had taken a decisive measure. 
Instead of delegating their authority to the archdeacon, now 
become their enemy, they confided it to special clerics called 



150 SOCIAL FRANCE 

" clerics of the bishop," chosen and removable by them. 
These confidential agents traveled with them constantly, 
forming their permanent council, carrying their messages, 
aiding them in giving judgments, and collecting their rev- 
enues. These clerics of the bishop gave rise to " official " 
and " high vicars," two institutions dating from the time of 
Philip Augustus. It is thanks to them that the bishop was 
able to combat victoriously the usurping tendencies of the 
archdeacons and to maintain his disputed authority over 
the parish and the cure. 

But in the diocese there were other organs of religious 
life than the parish; there were chapters and orders. There 
were then two classes of establishments which were another 
cause of labor and another source of difficulty and conflict for 
the bishop. Not all the canons were, like those of the cathe- 
dral, in competition with the bishop, but it was not less nec- 
essary to watch them, to oblige them to carry out their duties, 
and to give them regulations. As to the monks, either they 
were entirely exempt — that is, completely independent of the 
bishop — or else they were under his authority. In the first 
case, when the independent abbeys possessed a certain amount 
of wealth and fame, they were a decidedly serious obstacle 
in the exercise of episcopal power. Not only did they repel 
all interference of the bishop in their affairs to the point 
of not even admitting him to set foot in their churches, but 
they quarreled with him over jurisdiction, priories, and do- 
mains. There was constant struggle between the secular and 
regular clergy; certain abbots furnished opposition to the 
bishop even in the matter of dress, by obtaining from the 
pope the right to wear the episcopal insignia, sandals, miter, 
and crozier. The presence of exempt abbeys in the bishopric 
was a perpetual cause of uneasiness and irritation for the 
head of the diocese, but the subordinate abbeys in their turn 
bothered the bishop more than he wished; he had to inspect 
them like the parishes and correct abuses, protect them 
against plundering and do good in every way, particularly 
by means of gifts. Religious opinion required the bishops to 
be the benefactors of their abbeys, and even to found new ones 
in order to multiply the homes of learning in their dioceses. 

Monks, canons, archdeacons, and cures gave enough worry 



THE BISHOP 151 

and trouble and occasions for strife to the bishop for one 
to suppose that his relations with the clergy of the diocese 
amply filled his time and that he had so much to do at home 
that no time remained to pay attention to his colleagues and 
equals, the suffragan bishops of the same province. And yet, 
since he was subordinate to an archbishop, he was obliged 
to fulfil certain obligations toward his superior. He had to 
leave his diocese in order to assist at archiepiscopal synods 
or to witness the consecration of the other bishops of the 
province. Moreover, the archbishop had the right to make 
use of him, — to delegate him as judge in certain lawsuits, — 
so that, while supporting all alone the exceedingly heavy 
weight of the diocese, the bishop was obliged, in a certain 
measure, to work in the affairs of the province. But here, 
too, there could be, and often was, cause for difficulties and 
contentions. Relations with the archbishop were not always 
peaceful; the archbishop was often tempted to encroach on 
the episcopal right of judging subjects of the bishop in the 
first instance, and the latter had to struggle to resist this 
claim. The conflict sometimes became violent, going to the 
point of open war. Thus, in 1196, we see Bishop William 
of Lisieux in open war against the archbishop of Eouen, 
Walter of Coutances. The latter excommunicated the un- 
manageable bishop and in a letter, which is extant, accuses 
him with vehemence, " of having raised his heel against his 
mother, the church of Rouen, impelled by a spirit of pride 
and by every pestilential breath of Erebus. ' ' The misfortune 
was that conflicts of this nature were not solved at home, but 
that the superior and the subordinate, the archbishop and 
bishop, were obliged to go beyond the Alps to seek the solu- 
tion of their strife at the hands of the pope and his judges. 

The pope himself was a superior in another way as re- 
doubtable and exacting toward the bishops as were the arch- 
bishops. In the time of Philip Augustus, centralization of the 
church under the hand of the papacy and the cardinals was an 
accomplished thing, and the episcopate was the first victim of 
this state of affairs. Thanks to the appeal to Rome, the 
majority of lawsuits of ecclesiastical society were now car- 
ried before the pontifical court. But, happily, not all cases 
went to Rome, for it was the habit of the pope to employ 



152 SOCIAL FRANCE 

bishops as delegates of the Holy See for conflicts of 
little importance. They had charge of inquests, of hearing 
parties and testimonies, and of pronouncing the final sen- 
tence in the pope 's name. As if the bishop did not have enough 
to do with deciding all matters of his diocese and sometimes 
even those of his province, he was overwhelmed by the pope 
with extraordinary duties and special missions. Maurice of 
Sully, bishop of Paris, who was in office thirty-six years, 
was delegated at least twenty times as judge by the popes; 
which is evidently the minimum, though it would be necessary 
to have all the contemporaneous documents to learn the total 
number of times he was commissioned by the Roman church. 
Still the bishop might think himself fortunate if the 
papacy simply obliged him to perform some duty in his 
country. In cases of particular gravity, when he was him- 
self the accused or the complainant, it was necessary for him 
to appear at Rome in person. Moreover, he also had to go 
there when the pope assembled all Christendom in a general 
council. The journey to Italy was a dreadful one for the 
contemporaries of Philip Augustus, entailing great fatigue, 
dangers of every kind, and considerable waste of time and 
money. But the obligation was imperative, and the pope did 
not allow them to escape it easily. He threatened the recalci- 
trants, urged the tardy, and punished those who stayed away 
without valid excuse. In this connection it is interesting to 
read the correspondence of Alexander III and Bartholomew, 
archbishop of Tours. The archbishop had not appeared at 
the third Lateran council in 1179, although his presence at 
Rome was necessary to regulate many affairs of great im- 
portance. The pope wrote to him several weeks after, re- 
proaching him for his absence. He bade him repair his 
fault by coming to Rome by the fourth Sunday in Lent or, 
at the latest, the second Sunday after Easter. The arch- 
bishop was not anxious to make the journey to Italy, and, 
instead of replying himself, he wrote to Alexander by one 
of his friends, Stephen of Tournai, abbot of Sainte- 
Genevieve, a man on good terms with Rome. Stephen ex- 
cused the archbishop of Tours as well as he could, testifying 
that at the time of the council Bartholomew was sick, that 
he could not have gone to Rome without danger, and that 



THE BISHOP 153 

besides it was necessary for him to go to Paris to confer 
with the king. Next came another letter from the pope to 
the archbishop of Tours, but this time couched in almost 
threatening terms; Alexander trusted that, of course, the 
prelate would come to Rome on one of the days which he 
had set; he should have been punished for being absent 
from the council; he had been spared only at the request 
of Louis VII and his son, Philip Augustus. As for the final 
delay, he would give him until next Saint Martin 's day ; then, 
in case of non-appearance, the pope would be severe. 

Bishops had to invoke legal excuses and have recourse to 
every kind of legal subterfuge. The pope demanded the 
journey to Italy, under pain of excommunication, and his 
command often cost them their lives. The journey was not 
without danger for those who undertook it ; indeed, examples 
of French bishops who ended their lives in Italy are not rare. 
Aubri, archbishop of Reims, died at Pavia in 1218. Gerald 
of Cros, archbishop of Bourges, also died in the same year, 
a short time after leaving Rome. Henry of Dreux, bishop 
of Orleans, having come to Rome in 1197 to ask for the free- 
dom of his brother, the bishop of Beauvais, who had been 
imprisoned by Richard the Lion-Hearted, fell sick at Siena 
and never recovered. Hugh of Noyers, bishop of Auxerre, 
died ten days after his arrival. The occurrence became so 
frequent in the thirteenth century that the popes ended by 
taking a profit from it. They decided that, whenever the 
episcopal sees became vacant in curia — that is, during the 
bishop's sojourn at the Roman curia, — ^the papacy should 
have the right to nominate a successor to the office. If we 
possessed more documents for the reign of Philip Augustus, 
it is very probable that the number of French bishops whose 
presence was noticed in Rome would be greatly increased. 
One might mention Arnaud-Amauri, archbishop of Narbonne, 
pleading before the pope in 1217 against Simon de Mont- 
fort; "Walter of Coutances, archbishop of Rouen, pleading 
against his suzerain, Richard the Lion-Hearted; Walter 
Cornu, bishop-elect of Paris, in 1220 defending himself at 
Rome against the chancellor of his church; Matthew, bishop 
of Toul, a rascal of whom we shall speak again, coming to 
plead his own cause in 1210 before Innocent III; and many 



154 SOCIAL FRANCE 

other examples of the same kind which would be easy to 
gather. 

Thus we see how business, lawsuits, fatiguing moves, and 
more or less perilous journeys, — the normal relation between 
the head of a diocese and the members of ecclesiastical so- 
ciety, whether his subordinates or his superiors, — were car- 
ried on. To carry out this much required a well tem- 
pered mind and body. But all is not finished : we have said 
nothing about the outside conditions which fastened even 
harder obligations on the bishops. The period of the reign 
of Philip Augustus was marked by four great crusades, with- 
out counting a certain number of expeditions to the Holy 
Land of less importance. Bishops could not possibly keep 
out of this movement, but were forced by their position to 
participate in it; indeed, public opinion demanded that they 
should set the people a good example. They were obliged 
to leave their country and go with kings, great lords, and 
knights. And the fact is that they did not fail in this re- 
spect. A great many of them departed to fight the infidel 
or heretic in Spain, Languedoc, the Holy Land or Egypt, and 
a certain number of these pilgrim bishops never again saw 
their dioceses or native land. 

Below is a simple enumeration of facts and dates which is 
eloquent enough in itself in giving an exact idea of the ex- 
traordinarily active life of the bishops of France. 

Aubri of Humbert, archbishop of Reims, took part in the 
crusade against the Albigenses from 1209 to 1212; in 1215, 
he went to Rome to the Lateran council; in 1218, he de- 
parted for Syria, remaining there several months; he then 
embarked at Alexandria and was surprised by the Saracens 
at Lisbon. Freed by the knights of Calatrava, he passed 
through Italy again and, as we have seen, died at Pavia. 
In 1212, Arnaud-Amauri, archbishop of Narbonne, and Wil- 
liam Amanieu, archbishop of Bordeaux, fought the Saracens 
of Spain with King Alfonso of Castile. In 1190 and 1191, 
Bernard, bishop of Bayonne, Girard, archbishop of Auch,. 
John, bishop of Evreux, Manasses, bishop of Langres, 
Philip of Dreux, bishop of Beauvais, and Peter, bishop of 
Toul, took part in the third crusade, remaining in Sicily and 
assisting at the siege of Saint- Jean-d 'Acre. In 1202 to 1205,, 



THE BISHOP 155 

Nivelon of Cherisy, bishop of Soissons, and Garnier of 
Trainel, bishop of Troyes, — two heroes of the fourth crusade, 
— fought in the Greek Empire, taking Constantinople, play- 
ing an important role in the election of the first Latin Em- 
peror, and then returning to their dioceses laden with glory, 
money, and relics. From 1209 to 1219, there was a con- 
tinual coming and going of bishops who left their dioceses 
in order to perform their forty days' military service in the 
war against the Albigenses. Besides the archbishop of Reims, 
there appeared in Languedoc, simultaneously or successively, 
the archbishops of Rouen and Bourges; the bishops of Autun, 
Chalons, Cambrai, Limoges, Lisieux, Orleans, Paris, Chartres, 
Bayeux, Laon, Puy, and Saintes. After 1218, the period of 
the crusade of Damietta, the archbishops of Reims and Bor- 
deaux, the bishops of Autun, Limoges, Lisieux, Beauvais, and 
Paris departed for Egypt and the Orient. 

The fatigue and danger that a perilous and costly under- 
taking, a pilgrimage to a far country, or a crusade to the 
Holy Land, represented in the middle ages need not be em- 
phasized. One might for this period mention a long list 
of bishops who died during their journeys abroad: Aubri of 
Humbert, archbishop of Reims, in 1218; Eudes of Vaude- 
mont, bishop of Toul, in 1196; John of Bethune, bishop of 
Cambrai, in 1219 ; John of Verac, bishop of Limoges, in 1218 ; 
Jourdain, bishop of Lisieux, in 1218. In 1192, Manasses, 
bishop of Langres, died in France, but of a sickness con- 
tracted during the third crusade; Nivelon of Cherisy, bishop 
of Soissons, in 1207; Peter of Nemours, bishop of Paris, in 
1219; Peter, bishop of Toul, in 1191, etc. It would be inter- 
esting to compile a complete obituary; then one might see 
how many victims the crusades had in the episcopal personnel 
and how lightly these bishops considered the risks of an 
expedition across the sea or an absence not only of many 
months but of many years. Motives for going varied, no 
doubt, among individuals. Some took the cross from scruples 
of conscience, from professional necessity, from deference to 
the demands of the age; others, for love of adventure and 
in the hope of enriching their church with relics from the 
Orient; or simply for devotion, to reap the benefits of a 
campaign against the enemies of the faith. But whatever the 



156 SOCIAL FRANCE 

motive, whether willingly or not, they none the less went in 
the face of certain peril, and this again is proof of how much 
activity, moral energy, and physical strength the episcopacy 
demanded. 

The same conclusion is reached, if one considers the episco- 
pal calling from its temporal side and studies the relations 
of the bishop with the lay surroundings in which he was 
called to live. Though proprietor and lord, he was ex- 
posed to the attacks and pillages of which church property 
was always the victim on the part of nobles, both great and 
small. Without doubt, there were certain dioceses — that of 
Paris, for example — where resolute government, like that 
of Philip Augustus, had brought about a relative amount of 
order. Wherever there lived a high suzerain, strong and 
respected, the bishop had less trouble in defending his proper- 
ties and revenues from the castellans, brigands, or persecut- 
ing barons. But there were many bishoprics where the head 
of the diocese, ceaselessly harassed by pillages, had no other 
resource than to intrench himself within the episcopal house, 
which was transformed into a strong chateau, and hold him- 
self ever in readiness to engage in battle. Let one, for ex- 
ample, read the entertaining history of the bishops of 
Auxerre in the time of Hugh of Noyers and William of 
Seignelay; it is nothing but a series of conflicts with all 
the lay powers of the diocese, a perpetual and often danger- 
ous strife, in which the bishop defended himself, not only 
by acts of anathema, but with ready arms, with men-at-arms, 
and retainers. He found enemies everywhere: in the country 
the troublesome and surly petty nobility; in the cities the 
count with whom he shared authority, and the bourgeoisie, 
often organized into a commune that did not love the church 
lord and strove to impair his power. Among the cases 
of this kind which resounded loudest in the period of Philip 
Augustus it is sufficient to note the struggle of Bishop 
Stephen of Tournai with the inhabitants of his episcopal 
town; of Philip of Dreux and Miles of Nanteuil, bishops 
of Beauvais, with the bourgeoisie of Beauvais; of Hugh of 
Noyers, bishop of Auxerre, with the count of Auxerre, Peter 
of Courtenay; of Robert of Meung, bishop of Puy, with the 
bourgeoisie and nobility of his town ; of the bishops of Ver- 



THE BISHOP 157 

dun and Cambrai with the bourgeoisie and knights of their 
two cities, etc. There were dioceses where the conflict with 
the laity became a real war, with sieges, massacres, and bat- 
tles, and sometimes it was the blood of the bishop which 
flowed. In 1220, the bishop of Puy was assassinated by a 
nobleman whom he had excommunicated ; in 1208, the bishop 
of Verdun was slain in a riot by a lance-thrust, while already, 
in 1181, another bishop of Verdun had met his death while 
besieging the chateau of Sainte-Menehould. 

These several facts suffice to show all the painful necessi- 
ties, the suffering, and daily peril which the career of a 
bishop comprised. To finish this demonstration there remain 
to be seen the consequences which the role of vassal and of 
high functionary to royalty entailed upon the bishop. For 
— let us not deceive ourselves — the bishop, in regard to the 
lay sovereign, was not merely in a position of a feudatory 
who had no more contact with the suzerain once he had ful- 
filled his feudal obligations. The bishop was in the king's 
dependence, a dependence close and intimate, and the king as 
the protector of the churches exploited his bishopric in every 
way. From his bishops he demanded contributions, their 
presence in the royal army, and political services of every 
nature. He disposed of their money, their men-at-arms, and 
time without scruple; in brief, he considered them and used 
them as servants and agents, of whom he could demand any- 
thing. And, if the bishops resented this manner of doing, 
if they resisted demands which they found excessive, there 
was conflict, there was war with all its consequences: inter- 
dict placed on the land, excommunication of persons, occu- 
pation of the land with armed force, confiscation of episcopal 
incomes, proscription of the bishop, who was driven from 
his see and perhaps from the kingdom. 

It will suffice here to recall the more severe conflicts, nearly 
all of which ended in the defeat of episcopal power: a con- 
flict with the archbishop of Sens, in 1181, over a question 
of jurisdiction ; with the archbishop of Kouen, in 1196, over 
a question of property; with the bishop of Paris and many 
other bishops of the north of France, in 1200, apropos of 
the affair of Ingeborg; with the bishop of Auxerre, in 1206, 
on the subject of the royal prerogative ; with the bishops of 



158 SOCIAL FRANCE 

Orleans and Auxerre, in 1210, over military services; with 
the bishop of Paris, in 1221, over the question of juris- 
diction and property, etc. And the same quarrels which 
agitated Capetian France also troubled Plantagenet France. 
"We see Richard the Lion-Hearted, in quarrels with 
the archbishop of Rouen in 1197, with the archbishop of 
Poitiers in 1180; John Lackland, in a struggle with the 
bishop of Limoges in 1204. On all sides things were the 
same: the bishop who, in his relations with the clergy and 
nobility of his diocese, found so many difficulties to con- 
quer, so many adversaries to subdue, was obliged to cope 
with the sovereign and to strive against an oppressive roy- 
alty, a terrible superaddition of trouble, care, and danger. 

By dint of concessions and docili|;y, it was possible to 
avoid conflict and remain at peace with the king, but it was 
a peace singularly agitated and troubled by continual de- 
mands for money and services. The mere obligation of as- 
sisting at political and judicial assemblies and great gather- 
ings of the royal army, was a source of great fatigue and 
considerable expense for the French prelates. The bishops 
sought to escape it as much as possible, but still it was 
harder not to attend the king's convocations than to escape 
those of the pope. The king was always near and held mate- 
rial power. In 1193, Stephen, bishop of Tournai, a peace- 
ful man of letters, who dreaded traveling, sent the arch- 
bishop of Reims a tearful letter. The king had summoned 
him to appear with his men-at-arms at Mantes on the vigil 
of Ascension and the vigil of Pentecost. ^' What is to be 
done ? ' ' demanded the bishop. 

" I know nothing of nailitary affairs. I am vowed to religion, 
which is not to lead the life of the camps. Yet here I am called, 
who have never taken part in battle, and am ordered to arm myself, 
I who have never been able to bear arms. Since the time of Chil- 
perie the kings of France have never demanded anything from the 
bishops of Tournai except the oath of fealty and attendance at 
court. It is indeed hard for me to enter into a quarrel with my lord 
the king, but it is certainly impossible for me to do what he wishes. 
I find myself between the anvil and the hammer, where I shall have 
to offend the king or do a service which I am unwilling to do." 

A letter from this same bishop three years later shows 
him again overcome by the summons of Lent of 1196. He 



THE BISHOP 159 

was summoned by the archbishop of Reims to come and assist 
at the consecration of the bishop of Chalons on March 24; 
was summoned by the king to be present between the 
Vaudreuil and Gaillon in Normandy, where there was to be 
an interview between the sovereigns of France and England, 
on March 31 ; was summoned finally to Paris on April 7, to 
be present at the lawsuit of the bishop of Paris and the abbey 
of Chelles. He excused himself to the archbishop of Reims : 

" My Father ; I am sixty-eight years old, and I feel death near. 
Spare thy servant; my spirit is prompt to obey thee but my flesh 
is weak. I cannot without great danger to my body undertake and 
endure such journeys. If I should start out on the roads, I would 
never arrive at my destination." 

The bishops did not always find it convenient to allege 
old age and infirmities; such excuses often found the king 
skeptical, and, instead of accepting them, he summoned the 
defaulters to justice for failure in feudal duty. Then they 
came to the king's court or his camp, no matter how painful 
the journey. But it did not suffice simply to be present. 
At every turn the king charged his bishops with business 
missions and with embassies abroad. The episcopal personnel 
furnished him with agents, diplomats, and administrators, who 
cost him nothing. Thus many bishops, willy-nilly, took an 
active part in politics, being obliged to add to the daily busi- 
ness with which they were burdened the extraordinary 
services which were demanded of them. Without speaking 
of William of Champagne, archbishop of Reims, and Walter 
of Coutances, archbishop of Rouen, — who were veritable prime 
ministers, the one to Philip Augustus and the other to the 
king of England, — one may mention William of Chemilly, 
bishop of Avranches, charged in 1198 with an embassy to 
Germany by Richard the Lion-Hearted ; William, bishop of 
Lisieux, sent in 1200 by John Lackland to Portugal to nego- 
tiate a suit for marriage ; Helie, bishop of Bordeaux, on 
whom devolved the mission of conducting Blanche of Castile 
from Spain to Normandy in 1200; John, bishop of Evreux, 
charged with several missions by Henry II and Richard the 
Lion-Hearted; John of Verac, bishop of Limoges, principal 
agent of Philip Augustus in western France; Maurice of 



160 SOCIAL FEANCE 

Sully, bishop of Paris, charged with many diplomatic or 
administrative missions by the king of France. The list of 
these commissioned bishops would stretch out indefinitely. 
They were even employed to command military forces, like 
the bishop of Bayonne and the archbishop of Auch, who in 
1190 took the office of admiral at the instance of Richard the 
ILion-Hearted ; and the archbishop of Bourges, Simon of 
Sully, who in 1221 conducted a corps of the army in Langue- 
doc which was sent against the Albigenses by Philip Augus- 
tus. Some of them made a specialty of war, as did Philip 
of Dreux, bishop of Beauvais, and Guerin, bishop of Senlis, 
strategist of Bouvines. Much did Philip Augustus owe them. 



But such labors did not yet suffice to cover all the activities 
of the bishop. At this time when gothic art appeared, — if 
not in its richest, at least in its purest and most soberly 
elegant form, — the majority of bishops were great builders. 
Contemporaries themselves were impressed by this fact. In 
this regard the chronicle of Auxerre contains a very appro- 
priate passage: 

" In those times men were again fired with a passion for building 
new churches. Our bishop [William of Seignelay] seeing that his 
church of Auxerre, built in the taste of former times, was badly 
preserved and falling from age while in all the neighboring dioceses 
new churches were raising their splendid apses to the skies resolved 
to rebuild his own according to the dictates of modern art and to 
intrust its decoration to more expert architects. He did not wish 
his church to be inferior, either in beauty of ensemble or in care 
of detail, to those of other bishops. Therefore he caused the ancient 
edifice to be pulled down commencing with the apse, so that, de- 
prived of its antique appearance, the cathedral of Auxerre might 
reappear brilliant in youth and elegance and in all the magnificence 
of its renovation." 

^ Note this well-marked tendency of bishops to vie with each 
other in the grandeur and expense of the reconstruction of 
their cathedrals. It was a fad, a contagious passion ; each one 
of them, at least in northern France, wished a church built 
in the new style, and the old Roman churches were every- 
where torn down. It was not even necessary for them to be 



THE BISHOP 161 

old. At Paris, in order to rebuild his cathedral, Maurice 
of Sully demolished the church of Notre-Dame, which had 
been carefully rebuilt seventy years before under Louis the 
Fat. At Laon, Bishop "Walter of Mortagne, in 1170, built 
his gothic church in place of a Roman cathedral dating from 
1114. Roman was not the style of the day; something new 
was wanted, and that style which architects called gothic 
excited an admiration the expression of which has come 
down to us. Robert of Torigny, abbot of Mont-Saint-Michel, 
contemporary of Louis VII and Philip Augustus, said of 
Notre-Dame in Paris when he saw it under construction, 
" When this church is finished there will be no work this 
side the mountains which can be compared to it." 

The construction of a cathedral was to a bishop the cul- 
minating deed of his episcopacy, preeminently his magnum 
opus. The architect to whom he confided the chief technical 
direction of the enterprise was the master-builder {magister 
opens), but unfortunately the names of the creators of these 
marvels have not come down to us. Under the orders of the 
architect, the workmen (operarii) labored: that is, the mem- 
bers of the corps of different trades employed in the con- 
struction and decoration of the building. It was by these 
aids that the bishop, seconded by his chapter, accomplished 
the erection of a monument which was his best title to remem- 
brance and to recognition by the people. 

And there were few episcopal cities, especially in northern 
France, which, during the forty years of the reign of Philip 
Augustus, did not at least see their monument begun; very 
few regions which remained aloof from this great artistic 
movement. A remarkable thing, noticed by others long since, 
is that the towns and communes where the bourgeoisie was 
so restless, often so hostile to the bishop and the church, 
were not those which built the least gorgeous cathedrals, 
which certainly proves that, despite the theories of Viollet- 
le-Duc on the lay character of the corporations which built 
them, the work was religious and episcopal before everything 
else. It was the bishop with his corps of canons who always 
appeared as the inspirer, supervisor, and financial backer of 
the enterprise. The church was his work, and not that of the 
bourgeoisie, whatever the participation of the faithful in 



162 SOCIAL FRANCE 

the expense. To satisfy ourselves of this, let us make a tour 
of France; we shall see just what the contemporaries of 
Philip Augustus said. 

First, in the region north of the Loire, especially in Cape- 
tian France, which is the cradle of the new architecture, the 
workshops are on all sides in full activity. At Amiens, there 
is Bishop Evrard of Fouilloy, who in 1220 begins to build 
the most complete of all our cathedrals with the plans of the 
architect, Eobert of Luzarches. At Auxerre, Bishop William 
of Seignelay lays the first stone of the choir of his church in 
1215, for it is the choir which was generally begun first; it 
is important in the first degree for the canons to be able 
to officiate ; the nave, the portals, the towers, and the transept 
come after, and will be the work of one or many centuries. 
The work goes on so quickly at Auxerre that at the end 
of a year the high partition of the choir is almost finished. 
The chronicle does not name the architect, the magister 
operis, but it relates that, by his imprudence, he was the 
cause of a catastrophe. He thought that by props and trans- 
verse beams he had sufficiently strengthened the two towers 
of the old church which were situated on each side of the 
ancient choir. But it was perceived that fissures began to 
appear. The canons asked him whether they could continue 
celebrating their offices without danger. " Never fear," 
answered the architect. But one of his employees declared 
that he was not of the same opinion ; that he thought it would 
not be safe an hour hence. The architect replied that it was 
useless to frighten the chapter, since the props were firm. 
" But," returned the canons, " are you able to assure us 
that there is no risk? " "I cannot guarantee anything 
absolutely; I do not read the future." This reply decided 
the canons to transfer to the chapel annex ; and well for them 
that they did, for hardly had the bells rung in the south 
tower, than it fell with a crash like thunder upon the north 
tower. And then those miraculous acts were seen to occur 
which could not fail to accompany a work so pleasing to 
Heaven as the building of a cathedral. Two young men who 
were watching the masons work and who were on the tower 
at the moment it fell, by a real miracle had time to save 
themselves; while certain objects of worship were recovered 



THE BISHOP 163 

from the rubbish, intact. A little later, when the workmen 
were laboring at the rubbish, a piece of wall which remained 
on the tower all at once threatened to give way. They all 
saved themselves, but one of them perceived that he had left 
his coat in a dangerous place, where the wall was tottering; 
he ran there and was thought to be lost; but happily God 
watched over him and just in time arrested the collapse of 
the wall, which would certainly have crushed him. 

God was with those who built to do Him honor. At 
Chalons-sur-Marne on the 29th of August, 1183, the nave 
and transept of Notre-Dame, rebuilt according to the rules 
of the new architecture, were consecrated. Here, though 
an exception, they had not begun with the choir. The choir 
itself was not built until the first years of the thirteenth 
century and consecrated in 1322. At Evreux, the cathe- 
dral, also dedicated to Our Lady, had been almost de- 
stroyed in 1194 by a fire in the course of the war between 
Philip Augustus and Richard the Lion-Hearted. In 1202, 
Bishop Robert of Roye undertook to rebuild the great nave 
and constructed the triforium of a subdued elegance. At 
Lisieux, Saint-Pierre had been commenced in 1141 by Bishop 
Arnoul, but left unfinished by him in 1183. In 1215, it 
was enlarged; the choir was lengthened and was surrounded 
by an ambulatory and several apsis chapels. At Rouen, 
after 1207, they worked at the cathedral Notre-Dame. At 
Meaux, the gifts of Countess Marie of Champagne per- 
mitted the bishops to continue the work begun in 1170. To- 
ward 1210 the rafters and galleries were built, and about 
1220 the greater part of the choir was rebuilt. At Noyon, 
the cathedral begun in 1152 was practically finished in the 
first year of the ^thirteenth century. Ten years later, in 1211, 
Aubri of Humbert, archbishop of Reims, laid the first stone 
of the choir of his marvelous cathedral, but the work did not 
go on quickly here, the choir not being finished until 1241. 
But at least we know the name of the man who built it — 
Jean of Orbais, to whom belongs the honor, wrongly paid to 
Robert of Coucy, of being the first architect of the cathedral 
of Reims. Work was also done at Troyes, where Bishop 
Herve, before dying in 1223, finished the sanctuary of Saint- 
Pierre and the chapels surrounding it. At Laon, Notre-Dame, 



164 SOCIAL FRANCE 

so imposing with its four towers and its enormous symbolic 
animals hanging over the town, had been commenced at the 
end of the reign of Louis VII by Bishop Walter of Mor- 
tagne at about 1170. It was building all during the reign 
of Philip Augustus. The choir, which is the oldest part of 
the building, was finished in 1225, and the fagade dates from 
the time of the battle of Bouvines. 

The cathedral of Soissons was the work of one of the 
heroes of the fourth crusade, Bishop Nivelon of Cherisy, one 
of the most ardent hunters of Byzantine relics. It was to 
lodge them more sumptuously that he enlarged or rather 
rebuilt the sanctuary of his church. "We are more fortunate 
in the cathedral of Soissons, for we know exactly at what 
time the choir was finished. It has its date carved in a 
stone in the wall and the inscription reads thus, " On 
May 13, 1212, the community of canons began to enter this 
choir. ' ' 

In the valley of the Loire and its confines the buildings 
are less numerous, but some are among the most beautiful. 
At Chartres, the Roman church had been burned in 1194. 
Bishop Renaul of Moucon began immediately to build an 
immense cathedral; about 1220 the great rose window was 
placed and the arches were for the most part finished. The 
historian, William of Armorica, compares the roof of the 
church to an immense tortoise shell: " See it," he writes, 
" as it arises anew, dazzling with sculpture. It is a work of 
art which has no equal in the entire world. It can withstand 
fire even to judgment day." At Mans, in 1217, the bishop 
had the choir of Saint-Julien rebuilt. At Poitiers, the high 
altar of Saint-Pierre was dedicated in 1199, and between 
1204 and 1214 there were set up the beautiful windows of 
the crucifixion. Finally, at Bourges, the cathedral Saint- 
Etienne was begun in 1192. 

This movement spread even into the most distant prov- 
inces. The primatial church of Lyon was built under the 
direction of Archbishop Guiehard about 1175, and the cathe- 
dral Saint-Etienne of Toulouse (1211) rose in the midst 
of the war against the Albigenses. At Bayonne, Bishop Wil- 
liam of Donzac laid the first stone of Sainte-Marie in 1213. 
In Brittany, those of Quimper and Saint-Pol-de-Leon were 



THE BISHOP 165 

completed. In the Alps, the cathedral of Embrun was com- 
menced. But, in the opinion of the Christian world, all these 
marvels were surpassed by the great royal church at Paris, 
the work of Maurice of Sully. 

Notre-Dame was the thought and occupation of his whole 
lifetime. It is said that Pope Alexander III, on passing 
through Paris in 1163, laid the first stone of the new church. 
This fact has not been directly vouched for by a contem- 
porary, but this much is certain: that the choir was almost 
entirely finished in 1177, three years before the accession of 
Philip Augustus, for Robert of Torigny, abbot of Mont- 
Saint-Michel, saw it at this time and speaks of it with ad- 
miration in his chronicle. " Maurice, bishop of Paris," he 
says, " has been working for a long time to build the cathe- 
dral of this city. The apse is about finished, except for the 
great roof." It is equally certain that in 1182, on the nine- 
teenth of May, the high altar of Notre-Dame was consecrated 
by a papal legate. At the time of the bishop's death, in 1196, 
the roof was finished, but neither were the towers built nor 
the portals of the facade complete ; these were the work of 
the immediate successors of Maurice, notably of Eudes of 
Sully, and in all probability were not finished until 1220 or 
1225. It was necessary, to prepare the site of the new cathe- 
dral, to demolish the old Roman church of Notre-Dame and 
the little church of Saint-Etienne-le-Vieux, to buy and tear 
down many houses, to break through the Rue Neuve-Notre- 
Dame, which opened upon the vestibule and permitted a 
direct approach to the two bridges. 

Confronted with the great labor spent in preparation, as 
well as the construction of new buildings, one wonders how 
the bishops could defray such enormous expenses. Who paid 
the expense of building? Whence came the money? The 
question is interesting and demands a careful answer. To 
begin with, there is no doubt that the bishop consecrated a 
large part of his seigniorial revenues — his private fortune — 
to the great enterprise. This was what Bishop Walter of 
Mortagne did at Laon; this also was what Maurice of Sully 
did at Paris. A contemporary expressly says, " He built 
the edifice at his own expense, much more than by outside 
gifts." And it is known from his will that Maurice left to 



166 SOCIAL FEANCE 

his church the sum of one hundred livres, in order to build 
the leaden roof. At Soissons, Bishop Nivelon gave the site 
and renounced his rights to the revenues of vacant prebends. 
At Auxerre, Bishop William of Seignelay spent seven hun- 
dred livres from his own purse in the first year, without 
counting the abandonment of revenues accruing from his 
rights of justice; and in the following years he, each week, 
gave the sum of ten livres, which amounts to about one thou- 
sand five hundred francs to-day. To the funds furnished by 
the bishop from the episcopal income were added contribu- 
tions from the members of the chapters, who ordinarily appro- 
priated certain revenues for this work. Money accruing from 
the regular offerings of the faithful, whether on the occa- 
sion of mass or other offices, or at the time of the exposition 
of relics, was also consecrated to it. It is known that in 
the middle ages the proceeds from offerings given at the 
altar or for relics formed an important and perfectly sure 
income. It was only the occasional man who never committed 
a fault. So far as concerns Notre-Dame of Paris, Cardinal 
Eudes of Chateauroux said in the middle of the thirteenth 
century, ' ' It was with the offerings of women that the cathe- 
dral of Paris was in great measure built," which was true, 
though exaggerated, for the funds from gifts only partially 
supported the work. 

In order to excite the generosity of the faithful, there was 
recourse to another means: individuals giving money were 
granted remission of their penance, or were guaranteed a 
shortening of their time in purgatory by means of indul- 
gences. A contemporary of Philip Augustus, the monk Caesar 
of Heisterbach of Citeaux, states that Maurice of Sully had 
recourse to these measures. A usurer having come to con- 
sult him for means to save his soul, the bishop induced him 
to consecrate to the building of Notre-Dame the money ac- 
quired by his business. The cantor of Notre-Dame, the fa- 
mous Peter Cantor, when he was consulted, replied that he 
ought rather to give back the money to those from whom 
he had taken it. But the cantor was opposed to luxurious 
churches and he did not have the cathedral to build. It was 
necessary, however, to procure funds in order to raise to 
God a temple worthy of Him; from the religious point of 



THE BISHOP 167 

view, the end justified the means. For this object popes will- 
ingly gave bulls of indulgence — as for example, Innocent 
III in 1202, to aid in the reconstruction of the cathedral of 
Evreux. 

There was another method which many bishops used, and 
which was employed, for example, in the case of the cathe- 
dral of Auxerre. The priests of the bishopric or of the chap- 
ter took their most venerated relics and carried them about 
through the diocese, through neighboring dioceses, and some- 
times even to the borders of the country and into foreign 
parts. On all the highways they took up collections, which 
went to increase the funds for the work. 

Finally, to sums furnished and collected by episcopal 
authority, there were added voluntary gifts of private indi- 
viduals. To contribute toward the erection of a cathedral 
was one of the many means of achieving salvation. William 
of Armorica, the historian, — ^who, as we have seen, so much 
admired the cathedral of Chartres when it was rebuilt after 
the fire of 1194, — remarks, with something of a play on words, 
that the fire which had consumed the old church saved many 
souls, the souls of those who by their money helped to build 
the new church. We know at least one of them, a certain 
Manasses Mauvoisin, who in 1195 made a gift to the church 
of Notre-Dame of Chartres of an income of sixty sous, which 
was expressly to be used in the reconstruction of the church 
{ad opus ecclesie), " and when the work already begun," 
says the charter of donation, '^ is finished by the grace of 
God, the aforesaid income shall none the less permanently 
be at the disposal of the church." In return, the donor sim- 
ply demanded that the canons pray for him in this same 
church on the anniversary of the day of his death. At Paris, 
King Louis VII gave two hundred livres ; the Knight WiUiam 
of Barres, fifty livres ; a nephew of Pope Alexander III, two 
silver marks. At Auxerre, five years after laying the first 
stone of the cathedral, a " building association " was formed, 
composed of a group of the faithful who, desirous of gaining 
the indulgences attached to the enterprise, without doubt 
furnished funds for its achievement. It is probable that this 
institution spread into many other localities. 

In order to participate in the spiritual benefits of the work, 



168 SOCIAL FRANCE 

it was enough to give a piece of land, to furnish some mate- 
rials, to undertake the expense of a stained-glass window, or 
of any object used in worship. And gifts of this kind abound 
in the archives of new cathedrals. It was a field in which 
the piety of individuals and corporations competed. At 
Soissons, Adelaide, countess of Vermandois, in order to help 
the reconstruction of the cathedral, caused the timber neces- 
sary to cover the apse of the church to be taken from her 
forests in Valois; she furnished the oak all cut and carved 
to make the choir-stalls, and finally she paid the expense of 
a great stained-glass window. Another person of the same 
country put in two other windows at his own expense. At 
Troyes, in 1218, a certain man gave to the building the right 
to take loose stones from his quarry. At Chartres, in 1210, 
the chancellor of the chapter, Robert of Berou, made a gift 
of one of the choir windows. This window still exists: it 
represents two groups of pilgrims and the donor himself 
kneeling before an altar, with this inscription, " Bohertus de 
Berou, Carnotensis cancellarius." At Paris, the Cantor 
Albert gave twenty livres for the completion of the stalls 
of Notre-Dame ; and the dean of the chapter, Barbedor, made 
a gift of a window worth fifteen livres. All these gener- 
osities, and many others which might be cited from the 
cartularies and obituaries, were indeed well invested, for 
they repaid their authors with consideration in this world 
and with hope of salvation in the next. Every Christian and 
every Christian corporation had the right thus to contribute 
to enrich and embellish the work of their bishop ; and a theo- 
logian of the time of Philip Augustus ^ gravely propounds 
this question apropos of a case which is said to have pre- 
sented itself under the episcopacy of Maurice of Sully : ' ' The 
syndicate of the demimondaine of Paris offers to give the 
bishop either a stained-glass window or chalice. Can the 
bishop receive the gift? Yes, provided he does it without 
publicity." Maurice of Sully, who had a broad mind, 
thought that the money of a courtesan was worth as much 
as that of a usurer. The excellence of the intention purified 
it all. 

^ Cited by Haureau in his " Notices et extraits de quelques manu- 
scrits latins de la Bibliotheque Nationale," II, p. 10. - 



THE BISHOP 169 

To have a new church large enough to satisfy all the needs 
of worship, high enough to symbolize the Christian ideal, and 
appealing to the eye by its carving and color was what the 
bishop wanted for his clerics and people, while recognition 
and general admiration sufficed for the present to pay him 
for his trouble until his recompense in the world to come. 
This highly edifying work brought pleasure to all, both poor 
and powerful. Nevertheless, it displeased some. There were 
men so full of the spirit of monastic authority that they 
would not even admit of Christian luxury nor of silver lav- 
ished in the service of God. In all periods of the middle ages 
there were perceptible two opposing currents of Christian 
ideals: the antagonism of those who thought that prayer 
ought to be especially a testimony of the spirit, an act of 
faith simply expressed in an austere form without ceremonies 
appealing to the senses; and those who, on the contrary, be- 
lieved that everything beautiful and precious among earthly 
objects ought to be consecrated to the divine service. Sixty 
years before the thirteenth century. Saint Bernard indig- 
nantly denounced ' ' the great pride of the churches, their ex- 
traordinary length, their rich marbles and paintings." He 
saw in them the vanity of vanities; he declared that, '' in- 
stead of adorning itself with gilding, the church ought rather 
to cover the nakedness of her poor, and that the money spent 
upon the temples had been stolen from the unfortunate." 
"What would he have said had he witnessed the sumptuous 
display of gothie art, the general movement toward the con- 
struction of great churches? Peter Cantor, a moralist of his 
school, who found fault with the bishops for building them- 
selves palaces, no more approved when he saw them erecting 
their cathedrals : 

"Why build churches, as is done at the present time? The apses 
of these churches ought not to be so high as even the body of the 
edifice, for they symbolize a mystical idea : Christ, who is the head 
of humanity, is more humble than his church. To-day they strive 
to raise the choirs of churches more and more. This love for build- 
ing is a fever, an epidemic." And he adds, " What are the conse- 
quences of this malady? This luxury and sumptuousness on the 
walls of the building has the effect of cooling piety and of lessening 
charitable distributions to the poor. But the churches have been 
constructed with the usury of avarice and by the artifice of lies." 



170 SOCIAL FRANCE 

And lie branded the abuse of offerings so useful to bishops. 
Offerings were unnecessary, excepting in the great solemni- 
ties. There were too many churches, too many altars, 
' ' Behold, ' ' he says finally, ' ' what was the case in Israel ; 
it had but one temple, one tabernacle, one offertory." 

Peter Cantor might have been right from the point of view 
of Christian asceticism, and even this argument is debatable. 
But, from the point of view of art, he was wrong. Had he 
been listened to, Notre-Dame and all the cathedrals which 
arose from the earth in so many places in the France of the 
time of Philip Augustus would not be before our eyes to-day. 
For one must not forget that it is by the masterpieces of 
Roman and gothic art, and not by literature, that the spirit 
of the middle ages shows its power and originality. 



Besides their religious mission, bishops rendered other in- 
disputable services to society, for they protected their sub- 
jects in town and country at the same time that they were 
defending themselves against the brigandage of the lay lords, 
and were the king's aids in his work of concentrating the 
national forces for the sake of order. This life of continual 
activity and of incessant strife, which was the life of the 
majority of them, could not help but gain sympathy and 
popular recognition. In reality they were often nothing but 
soldiers, who lacked what we to-day call episcopal virtue, 
but they lived and died, enjoying the respect and affection of 
a great majority of their diocesans. And when the historian 
of the bishops of Auxerre — speaking, for example, of the 
death of William, bishop of Toucy, in 1181, and of the uni- 
versal regret it created — asserts " that it would be impos- 
sible to tell how great was the mourning throughout the 
entire city, and with what groanings and lamentations sor- 
row was shown by all who were present at the obsequies," 
we believe that it is not a ready-made, stereotyped phrase 
forming a part of an official ceremony. These men of the 
middle ages loved their bishop sincerely; they had need of 
his zeal, and we have seen that he spent himself as much 
for their benefit as for that of the monarchy. 

The nobles, feudal lords, barons, and castellans were less 



THE BISHOP 171 

favorable to the episcopacy, and for a different reason: in 
the eyes of a lay lord the bishop was often an obstacle and 
an enemy. We shall presently discuss the perpetual an- 
tagonism which everywhere in France brought on quarrels 
between bishop and baron. Nobles did not write history, 
and as a result we do not know historically what they thought 
and said of the head of their diocese. We can only guess it 
at the best from the fact that they often made desperate war 
against him, braving his anathemas for a long time. But, 
for want of history as such, we must direct ourselves to those 
works of imagination thoroughly saturated with the spirit 
of feudalism and nobility and especially composed for listen- 
ers in chateaux. These are the chansons de geste, heroic 
poems — a literature which attained its height in the time of 
Philip Augustus. It must be remembered that, primarily, 
the chansons de geste, in a more or less hyperbolic form, give 
us the opinions which prevailed in feudal society and in 
military circles. But in reading these poems, written par- 
ticularly to amuse or flatter men of arms, one perceives from 
the start that the bishops do not play — so to speak — any 
role; if they appear at all, it is as shadowy figures, as per- 
sonages in the background. They are not noticed in time 
of peace, and it is with reluctance that they are mentioned 
in armies or battles. The same thing is noticed of other 
clerics in general, both secular and regular members of the 
church. The authors of the epics — such as Oarin le Lorrain 
or Girart de Eoussillon — always present the clergy in an 
absolutely subordinate and inferior position. If we believed 
them, clerics were useful only to serve as secretaries to 
illiterate nobles, to collect the dead on the field of battle, to 
place ointments on wounds, and say masses for those who paid 
for them. They speak of clerics only casually, in a line, 
and then with visible disdain. 

We have no need of remarking that this indifference, this 
easy and contemptuous way of sacrificing episcopacy and 
church, is decidedly in opposition to historical fact. It is 
known, on the contrary, what a considerable place bishops 
held, not only in religious, but also in civil society; what a 
frequent part they took in the military expeditions, legal 
and political councils of kings and high feudal suzerains. 



172 SOCIAL FRANCE 

History shows them to us intervening and acting on all sides 
and under all circumstances. This, then, is evidently a note- 
worthy example of the liberty with which the authors of 
chansons de geste treated contemporary truth, and shows, 
therefore, that one must be prudent when trying to draw 
useful historical conclusions from these fantastic composi- 
tions. It is clear that here we meet firmly fixed prejudice. 
The author who wrote for the diversion of the nobles shared 
all the prejudices of the nobility whom, above all, he at- 
tempted to picture ; he is only an echo, an instrument of 
the malice of the military caste. They had too much strife 
with the bishops to recognize their superiority, to render them 
justice, or even to permit having them mentioned in the 
songs composed for their own distraction. 

For the minstrels usually said little or nothing of these 
mitered and croziered powers; when they spoke of them, it 
was to present them in a most unfavorable light. For ex- 
ample, the author of the poem, Oarin le Lorrain: in a sort 
of introduction he spoke of the episcopacy as an egotistical, 
avaricious corporation, which refused to contribute to the 
expenses which the defense of the realm necessitated. When 
the archbishop of Eeims, the highest ecclesiastical personage 
of France, was asked to give pecuniary aid to the Emperor 
Charles Martel and his knights, who were ready to fight the 
pagans, he replied: 

"'We are clergy; it i& our duty to serve God. We gladly pray 
that you may gain the victory, and may be defended from death. 
As for you, knights, God has commanded you to come to the aid 
of the clergy and to protect Holy Church. But why so many words ? 
I swear by the great Saint Denis, you shall not have an Angevin 
sou from me.' ' Sire archbishop,' responded the abbot of Cluny, 
' you are wrong in not guarding the memory of our benefactors. 
If we are rich (for which the Lord be praised), it is from the good 
lands which their ancestors bequeathed us. Let each one of us 
to-day contribute something of his own; it would be foolish, by 
refusing entirely, to expose ourselves to greater losses.' ' Do as you 
wish,' replied the angry archbishop ; ' but I would let myself be 
tied to the tails of their horses before I would give two Angevin 
farthings.' " 

In this passage there is evidently an allusion to the 
pecuniary requisitions of which the bishops were the victims 



THE BISHOP 173 

on the part of the kings of France and the popes in the mid- 
dle of the twelfth century; or perhaps even an allusion to 
some particular episode, like that of the Saladin tithe exacted 
by Philip Augustus in 1188. The truth is that the church 
and her subjects supported this heavy tax almost entirely 
alone. Without doubt, some bishops murmured and let their 
contributions wait, and others did not yield without pressure. 
But, on the whole, the high clergy paid. They are seen 
pawning even the altar cloths and holy vessels for the aid of 
king or pope. The feudal poet has in this instance perpetrated 
an intended exaggeration, almost an historical lie. 

The class of players who at this same time created and 
developed another kind of profane literature, the fabliaux, 
as we have seen, especially attacked the clergy and the parish 
cures. The bishops did not often appear in these tales, but, 
when they did play some role, it was not always just to their 
advantage. According to their narrator, they led scandalous 
lives, which, considering the example set by their superiors,, 
explains the loose manners of the average cures. Here again 
the spontaneousness of the satirists, which is more than blunt, 
abused certain all too true facts by attributing to the episco-. 
pal personnel as a whole the faults of some of its members. 

But, after all, it must be admitted that, in this respect, ver-. 
nacular literature was only turning to its own uses what a cer- 
tain class of religious literature said concerning the episcopacy. 
In the middle ages, members of the clergy were never more 
mistreated verbally than by the clergy itself. The nobles 
and the bourgeoisie, the enemies of the church, were never 
harder or more unjust to the episcopacy than were certain 
preachers, who believed themselves obliged to strike heavily 
in order to move and correct the more surely. Besides, 
many of the authors of these sermons were monks or clerics, 
imbued with the monastic spirit — a spirit, as we know, pro- 
foundly opposed to the official and worldly prelates of the 
church. One of these, Geoffrey of Troyes, leaves us the 
following picture of the episcopacy: 



" The bishops are past masters, as wolves and foxes. They 
flatter and bribe in order to extort. They are devoured by avarice, 
burning with a desire to possess. Instead of being the friends and 



174 SOCIAL FRANCE 

protectors of the church, they are its ravishers. They despoil it, 
selling its vestments, and violating justice. Their only rule is their 
own wish. See them walk; they have a proud bearing, a cruel air, 
sullen eyes, a harsh word. Everything in their personality breathes 
pride. Their conduct is the reverse of good manners; theirs is even 
a life of wickedness. They wish to be an object of terror to their 
flocks, forgetting that they are physicians, not sovereigns." 

Adam of Perseigne compares the life of the clergy with 
that of Christ: 

" He suffered, and they live in luxury ; He wore hair-cloth, and 
they silken vestments. It is with the patrimony of the Crucified 
that they maintain their luxury and their pride. They care not for 
souls but for their hunting birds. They care not for the poor but 
for their dogs. They play at dice, instead of administering sacra- 
ments. The churches instead of being holy places, have become 
market-places and haunts for Drigands." 

Peter of Blois especially attacked the judges and adminis- 
trators of the bishops, the " officials " who took the place of 
the prelate and his tribunal and relieved him in part from 
the worry of affairs. Lately instituted and revocable at will, 
these agents represented in the diocese that unity, direction, 
and authority so singularly compromised by the encroach- 
ments of the archdeacons, though they also abused their 
power : 

" They have but one thought, to oppress, to fleece, to flay the 
members of their diocese. They are the blood-suckers of the bishop, 
or the sponges which he squeezes from time to time. All the money 
which they extort from the poor goes for the pleasures and dainti- 
nesses of episcopal life. These wranglers, hairsplitters, ready to en- 
snare the unfortunate litigant in their nets, interpret the law in their 
own way and handle justice like despots. They break contracts, 
nourish hatred, break up marriages, protect the adulterer, penetrate 
into the interior of homes under the pretext of being inquisitors, 
slander the innocent, and absolve the guilty. In a word, these sons 
of avarice, live wholly for money. They have sold themselves to 
the devil." 

Some official documents attest how very many bishops led 
a life which was hardly exemplary. The decrees of two 
councils — the one held in Paris in 1212, and the other at 



THE BISHOP 175 

Montpellier in 1214 — contain orders and prohibitions, show- 
ing us indirectly the customs of the episcopacy. Bishops 
were ordered to wear the tonsure and vestment of their order ; 
they were forbidden to wear luxurious furs, to use decorated 
saddles or golden bits, to play games of chance, to go on the 
chase, to swear or to suffer one among them to swear, to 
introduce players or musicians to their table, to hear matins 
while still in bed, to talk of frivolous things during an of- 
fice, or to excommunicate at random. They were not to quit 
their residence, were to convene a synod at least once a year, 
and, on their visits in the diocese, they were not to take a 
numerous suite with them, it being too heavy a charge to 
those who entertained them. They were prohibited from 
receiving money for conferring orders, from tolerating the 
concubinage of priests, from dispensing with the marriage 
bans, and from failing to excommunicate the guilty. Finally, 
they were not permitted to celebrate illegal marriages, to 
annul lawful wills, to allow dancing in holy places, or the 
celebration of fools' holiday in the cathedral, or to allow 
any one to proceed with legal combat and judgments of God 
in their presence. 

One need not believe the authors of these sermons word for 
word, since they aim to show up the bad rather than the 
good, nor to conclude from the orders of the councils that 
the general customs of the church were deplorable. Never- 
theless, it is certain that, in spite of the great reforms of 
the previous age, the episcopacy in great measure remained 
feudal. A great many of the prelates, indeed, belonged to 
the noble class and lived like castellans. 

Hugh of Noyers, bishop of Auxerre, is the type of fighting 
bishop who contended against the nobles, coped even with 
the king, and worked eagerly to increase his territory and 
the revenues of his church. He built houses which were 
really fortresses, " surrounded by great moats, to which the 
water was directed from afar at great expense ; protected by 
great palisades, surmounted by a donjon; equipped with 
turreted ramparts, gates, and drawbridges." One day 
Thibaud, count of Champagne, exercising his right of 
suzerain, razed to the ground the walls and towers of one of 
these formidable manors, leaving nothing standing except the 



176 SOCIAL FRANCE 

dwelling-house. " The bishop of Auxerre spent too much," 
adds the chronicler of the bishop. 

" He loved the society of men-at-arms and knights, and took 
as active a part in their exercises and sports as the dignity of the 
priesthood permitted. He was well lettered, reading books, and 
willingly remaining at study when he had time. Very active in his 
own interests, he cared little for those of others, and was harsh 
toward his subjects, whom he crushed with intolerable exactions." 

At Narbonne, Archbishop Berenger II (1192-1211), was 
among those who, according to the expression of Innocent III, 
" served no other god but money, and had a purse in place 
of a heart." Everything had to be paid for, even the con- 
secration of bishops. When a church came to be vacant, he 
refrained from naming an Incumbent, in order to profit from 
its revenues. He reduced the number of canons at Narbonne 
by one-half, in order to appropriate their prebends, and like- 
wise retained the vacant archdeaconries. The pope writes 
in 1204 that one might in his diocese see ' ' monks and canons 
regular laying aside the frock, taking wives, living by usury, 
becoming lawyers, players, or doctors." Six years later, 
Berenger had not reformed; Innocent III, therefore, begged 
his legates to use the ecclesiastical censures against him and 
against his colleague, the archbishop of Auch, who it seems 
was no better than he. 

Helie I, archbishop of Bordeaux '(1187-1206), brother of 
a Gascon highwayman employed by Henry II and Richard, 
lived surrounded by men-at-arms and subjected his diocese 
to regular plunder. We saw above ^ how the pope accused 
him of sharing the profits of his raids. Once Helie installed 
himself in the abbey of Saint- Yrieix with his highwaymen, 
his horses, his hunting-dogs, and his courtesans, and led such 
a life at the expense of the inhabitants and the monks that 
after his departure some of them, despoiled of everything, 
died of starvation. In a letter of 1205, Innocent III com- 
pared him to " a bare and rotten tree, which delights in its 
rottenness as a beast of burden in its filth." 

The most extraordinary bishop of this period was Matthew 
' Chapter I. 



THE BISHOP 177 

of Lorraine, bishop of Toul (1198-1210). He belonged to 
the ducal family. Provost of the church of Saint-Die before 
his election, he was already living as a magnificent and dis- 
solute lord, squandering the revenues of his charge and forc- 
ing his colleagues, the dean and canons, to quit the place. 
When he became bishop, he exploited his diocese with such 
shamelessness that the chapter of Toul asked the pope to 
depose him. Innocent III ordered an investigation of his 
conduct, but, on the eve of the day on which Matthew was 
to appear, the dean of Toul was seized by some men-at-arms, 
placed on an ass, his feet tied together under the belly of 
the animal, and was taken to the bishop, who had him 
chained and thrown into prison. A legate of the pope ex- 
communicated Matthew, but it was eight years (1202-1210) 
before his deposition became effective and the faithful of 
Toul could choose another bishop. During the interminable 
lawsuit, Matthew had built a chateau on the elevation over- 
looking Saint-Die, from which he plundered all the coun- 
try. His relative, the duke of Lorraine, was himself obliged 
to demolish it. Expelled finally from his domain, Matthew 
retired to a little hermitage in the midst of a forest, where 
he lived by hunting and brigandage, only waiting for an 
opportunity to avenge himself on his successor. In 1217, 
he found it. The new bishop, Renaud, was stabbed in a pass 
of ;6tival, and Matthew fled into the mountains, taking the 
episcopal luggage, the chasubles, the vases, and the holy 
chrism. It became necessary for Thibaud, duke of Lorraine, 
to free the church and with his own hand kill this bishop 
who was both brigand and assassin (May 16, 1217). 

In contrast to this type of prelate, a survivor of primitive 
and savage feudalism, others are found — ^like Stephen of 
Tournai, William of Champagne, and Peter of Corbeil — who 
were theologians, politicians, men of letters, and courtiers. 
Even Paris, in the time of Louis VII and Philip Augustus, 
had a model bishop, Maurice of Sully. 

Elected bishop of Paris in 1160, he did not seek to play 
a political role, although he enjoyed the confidence of both 
king and pope. He excelled in the moral and administrative 
management of his diocese, which he governed for thirty-six 
years. He is almost considered as a saint, and a monk of 



178 SOCIAL FRANCE 

the abbey of Anchin, who saw him in 1182, has left us this 
enthusiastic picture of him. 

"Maurice, bishop of Paris, vessel of affluence, fertile olive tree 
in the house of the Lord, flourished among the other bishops of Gaul. 
Without speaking of those inner qualities, which God alone knows, 
he shone without by his knowledge, his preaching, his many alms, 
and his good deeds. It was he who constructed the church of the 
most Holy Virgin, in his episcopal residence, and in this work, at 
the same time so beautiful and sumptuous, he employed the resources 
of others less than his own revenues. His presence at the cathedral 
was frequent, or rather continual. I have seen him at a feast which 
was not a solemnity, at the hour when vespers were chanted. He 
was not seated in his episcopal chair, but sat in the choir, intoning 
the psalms like the others and surrounded by a hundred clerics." 



CHAPTER VI 
THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 

It does not seem that there was ever a time in the middle 
ages when the monk fully and rigorously conformed to the 
rule of his institution, which required him to flee all contact 
with the world and to live in perpetual seclusion, absorbed 
in study, prayer, and manual labor. The monk was an agent 
of enlightenment and a spiritual influence; but he was also 
for this very reason a social power. How could society help 
using for other ends the influence and prestige which monks 
enjoyed among the people ? The greatest monk of the middle 
ages was Saint Bernard, but there is no monk who lived 
oftener and for longer periods of time outside of his abbey. 
He passed his life on horseback in France, Germany, and 
Italy. Blamed for it, he often grieved over it and scruples 
of conscience troubled him. He found " monstrous " — ^the 
word is his — the life to which the church condemned him. 
' ' I am, ' ' said he, " I know not what fantastic animal, neither 
cleric nor layman, wearing the robe of a monk and not prac- 
tising its observances." 

Fifty years after the death of Saint Bernard, at the end 
of the twelfth century, monks no longer felt these 
scruples. It is said that, shortly after the death of the 
founder of the order of Grandmont, Stephen of Muret, the 
tomb of this holy man, where numerous miracles were per- 
formed, attracted such a multitude of pilgrims and visitors 
that it angered the monks of Grandmont, whose solitude was 
destroyed. They objected to the saint performing miracles 
and threatened, if he continued it, to throw his body into a 
cesspool. I do not know whether this story is well founded, 
but, in any case, this fervor did not last. In the time of 
Philip Augustus, the monks not only found it very conven- 
ient and exceedingly profitable to allow laymen to come to 
the church in multitudes, but they themselves voluntarily left 

179 



180 SOCIAL FRANCE 

their cloister and went out into the profane world. In spite 
of canonical prohibitions and the severity of the rules, they 
were to be seen everywhere, upon every road. Philip of 
Harvengt, abbot of Bonne-Esperance and a contemporary of 
Philip Augustus, indignantly complains of it: 

" Where is the road, the village, where is the crowded thorough- 
fare, in which one does not see the monk on horseback? Who is 
now able to leave his house without stumbling upon a monk? Is 
there a feast, a fair, or a market-place where monks do not appear? 
They are to be seen in all assemblies, in all battles, in all tourneys. 
Monks swarm everywhere that knights assemble for battle. What 
do they in the midst of the shock of bucklers and the crash of 
furious lances, and wherefore are they authorized to go out thus and 
ride about?" 

The people of the middle ages were almost as superstitious 
as the ancients. But, if it was an ill omen to meet a hare, a 
disheveled woman, a blind person, or a cripple, it was 
scarcely less lucky to meet a monk. A letter of Peter of Blois 
contains a characteristic anecdote on this point. A cleric, 
who had his degree, Master "William le Beau, was leaving 
an inn when he met a monk and, what is more, this monk 
earnestly appealed to him to reenter the inn, assuring him 
that he was threatened with a great disaster if he risked trav- 
eling that day. Master le Beau, adds Peter of Blois, regard- 
ing everything that did not rest on faith as foolishness, 
mounted his horse to join the retinue of the archbishop, whom 
he accompanied. " But he had gone only a few steps when, 
with his horse, he fell into a deep pond, from which he was 
rescued with difficulty." And Peter of Blois moralizes on 
this incident, " My opinion is that Master le Beau would 
have fallen into the pond even if no monk had spoken to 
him." Educated people, like him, no longer accepted such 
beliefs; but, as far as meeting monks was concerned, there 
was no great virtue in this attitude, as monks were at that 
time to be found everywhere, and he was obliged to habitu- 
ate himself to meeting them. 

The assertion of Philip of Harvengt is not exaggerated; 
it is enough to open a chronicle and read the correspondence 
of the time to see how the monks were employed in politics 



THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 181 

and business and how princes and kings little hesitated to 
take them from their cloisters and intrust them with the most 
diverse missions. They were discreet, clever men, understand- 
ing how to do things. The respect which their robes inspired 
permitted them, more than any others, to go about without 
fear. As negotiators and as messengers to the court and 
to the armies, one frequently sees them taking their places in 
the entourage of the Capetians and the Plantagenets. 

In 1202, when John Lackland triumphed over his nephew, 
Arthur, at Mirabeau, a victory unhoped for but complete, he 
hastened to communicate his success to the body of his Eng- 
lish councillors, who were then in Normandy — notably Wil- 
liam Marshal, earl of Pembroke. And to whom did he 
intrust the message? A monk. Observe the passage which 
we find on this subject in the versified chronicle of the biog- 
rapher of William Marshal : 

"A monk set out and, traveling day and night, made his way to 
Marshal. He courteously delivered his message, announcing the 
capture of Arthur, of Geoffrey of Lusignan, of the count of Marche, 
of Savari of Mauleon, and of other great personages who supported 
Arthur. Marshal rejoiced greatly and said to the monk : ' You shall 
carry this news to the host of France, to the count of Eu at Arques, 
to give him joy.' ^ ' Sire,' said the monk to William Marshal, ' I 
beg your mercy. If I go there the count will be so angry that he 
will surely kill me. Send another than I.' ' Monk,' said Marshal, 
' do not make excuses ; you are the one to go. It is not the custom 
in this country to kill messengers. Go at once; you will find him 
with the army.' The monk went with a large retinue to Arques 
and communicated the news of Poitou to the count of Eu. The 
count, who had expected very different news, changed color and re- 
mained silent. He lay down in his tent, much depressed, not know- 
ing what to do, for he did not wish to repeat to any one what he 
had just heard." 

Philip Augustus, like his English rivals, gladly employed 
monks. He always kept one of them, Brother Bernard of 
Coudray, a Grandmontain, near him and intrusted him with 
the most delicate negotiations. It was William, a monk of the 
abbey of Sainte-Genevieve, whom he sent to Denmark to 

1 One should note that the count of Eu, brother of the count of Marche, 
whom John Lackland had just made prisoner, was an ally of Philip 
Augustus, and one of the most rabid enemies of the English king. 



182 SOCIAL FKANCE 

handle the matter of his marriage with Ingeborg, and who 
brought the young fiancee back to France: the marriage 
turned out badly, as is well known, but that was not the fault 
of the negotiator, an excellent cleric, whom the church 
canonized. An abbot of Sainte-Genevieve, the scholar and 
philosopher, Stephen of Tournai, was also for many years 
the man of aifairs and ambassador, appointed by Philip 
Augustus. We have not spoken of Brother Guerin, the 
hospitaler, who was a valuable clerk of universal competence 
to the king of France during the last twenty years of his 
reign, for he exercised at one time the functions of chan- 
cellor, minister of foreign affairs, and chief of the army. 
We know the important part which he took in the victory of 
Bouvines. Monks were good for everything, and sovereigns 
imposed upon them. It was not always of their own free 
will that the monks left the monastery to journey afar in a 
time when long journeys were as uncomfortable as perilous. 
One need only to read the terrified letters in the correspond- 
ence of Stephen of Tournai, in which he speaks of his mis- 
sion' to Toulouse and of the countless dangers which he had 
encountered; especially a note in the year 1183, in which 
he thanked Heaven and man for having escaped a journey 
to Rome, the king having changed his mind. One would say 
that a criminal condemned to death had just received pardon. 
It is not only the historical documents, properly so called, 
which show us the monk taken from his convent by -the rulers 
and traveling the roads and busying himself with temporal 
affairs, even with matrimonial negotiations. The testimony 
of the chansons de geste, which were written in the time of 
Philip Augustus, agrees exactly with that of the chronicles. 
Open, for example, the poem Garin le Lorrain, one of those 
which most certainly date from this period. Duke Hervis of 
iMetz entered his estate and happened to take shelter at the 
convent of Gorze. He said to the abbot, in whom he had 
great confidence, " Go and find me a maiden, for I want a 
wife." The abbot answered that he would willingly do so, 
but that he wished to know where he was to find her. " By 
God who created me," said Hervis, " I want Aelis, the sister 
of Gaudin. Under heaven there is not another more beauti- 
ful. Likewise, in this century there is not a better knight 



THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 183 

than her brother. ' ' The abbot made ready immediately upon 
receiving the order. He left with fifteen monks and a num- 
ber of knights. He was rich and traveled " very luxuri- 
ously." The roads were covered with mules, packhorses, 
and palfreys. A month sufficed for the mission, and 
he returned to Metz with the young girl. Hervis le Lor- 
rain went to meet them. " Welcome," he said to the abbot, 
and, taking the girl by the hand, said to her: " Beautiful 
maiden, by the God who does not lie, thou art beautiful of 
face and form; I will make thee a very rich woman." 
" Sire," responded Aelis, " I give thee many thanks." 

Further on the author of the poem shows us Lietri, the 
abbot of Saint- Amand in Pevele, intrusted with carrying the 
body of his brother Begon, whom assassins had surprised by 
treachery in a forest, to the mighty Duke Garin. He left 
with fifteen monks and twenty-six knights, and, his errand 
accomplished, he returned to his abbey after a fifteen days' 
journey. ' ' Scarcely seated in his cloister, his monks crowded 
about him, asking him why he had been sent and what he had 
done." He satisfied their curiosity and ended by saying, 
' ' Go, pray that peace be made ^mong these powerful barons. ' ' 

Evidently the profession of messenger and negotiator was 
almost a specialty of the monk; a wearisome profession and 
one at times fraught with dangers of a grave character. The 
poem Garin, in another scene, tells of two monks whom the 
archbishop of Reims sent to the court of France to bear false 
testimony. He wished to prove an imaginary relationship 
between the Princess Blanehefleur and Duke Garin in such 
a way as to hinder their marriage. For King Pepin himself 
wished to marry the intended bride of the duke, his vassal. 
At the moment when the archbishop solemnly announced the 
marriage of Blanehefleur and Garin, one of the monks, whom 
he had stationed together with the king, advanced and stated 
that the father of the baron was a near relative of the father 
of the fiancee. 

" These words threw Begon, brother of Garin, into a fit of anger. 
He leaped upon the monk, knocking him down, and trampling him 
with his feet, and cried : ' Where have you gotten what you tell us ? * 
He would have killed the unlucky wretch if some one had not has- 
tened to the rescue. ' Sire vassal,' said the king angrily, * it seems 



184 SOCIAL FRANCE 

you hold me in great contempt to beat this monk thus before me.' 
' He, a monk ! Sire, he is not, he is a traitor, a renegade ; he has 
been paid, by whom I do not know, to talk as he has. I swear 
by Saint Denis, if I lay hands on him a second time he is a dead 
man.' ' Enough,' answered the king, ' I shall send for the saints, and 
the monks shall swear on the relies to the truth of what they have 
said.' The relics came, and the two monks took the oath required 
of them." 



The feudal spirit predominates in the poem Garin, and it 
is not all well-disposed toward churchmen. Without pre- 
tending that there were many monks capable of accepting a 
task as that above, it is certain that great numbers and all 
kinds of them were to be seen in the assemblies and in the 
court, and that they were used in all professions. They even 
followed the armies, a circumstance which moved Philip of 
Harvengt to wrath and to demand why they were seen in 
battles and tournaments. Why? It is surprising that the 
abbot of Bonne-Esperance should ask this question. He, like 
all contemporaries of Philip Augustus, must have known that, 
wherever there was an army, there was found a whole troop 
of clerics and monks of every kind — " men of peace," who 
had a double mission: first, they intervened between belliger- 
ents in order to induce them, in the name of the church and 
of the crusade, to conclude, if not a definitive peace, at least 
a truce, an armistice. On every page of the chronicles there 
is talk of the efforts of the " religious men " to prevent the 
knights from joining battle. Then if, in spite of attempts 
at peacemaking, the battle began, these clerics and monks 
served to care for the wounded. They carried the wounded 
to the physicians, the mires, and many of these physicians 
were themselves monks, who had studied at Montpellier or 
Salerno. 

It was the monks also who performed the service of inter- 
ring the dead, for the noble knight desired to be bestowed in an 
abbey and was happy if, before he died, he could assume the 
monastic habit. The chronicles and charters give us a thou- 
sand examples of this; the chansons de geste are here only 
an echo of the truth. G-arin said to the abbot of Saint- 
Vincent of Laon : ' ' Let the bodies of my good friends, who 
have just been killed, be collected, enshrouded, and buried. 



THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 185 

I shall raise funds so that God may show them mercy." 
Likewise, Hervis of Metz sent for the abbot of Saint-Seurin 
of Bordeaux, who came, accompanied by ten monks. 
' ' Seignior abbot, ' ' said Hervis, * ' I have sent for you to bury 
two varlets before the high altar of Saint-Seurin. If you 
consent, I will give you a large part of my treasure." '* As 
you wish," answered the abbot. Immediately bathing the 
corpses, he took them to the monastery of Saint-Seurin, to 
the place the duke had named. It was a windfall for the 
monastery. One is, then, not astonished that the monk played 
his part in the military life of the knight and that wherever 
the nobles did battle and killed each other, whether in war or 
in the tournaments, so frequent in the time of Philip Augus- 
tus, one finds the monks nursing the wounded, blessing and 
burying the dead. 

The wandering foot (acedia), that incurable spleen, that 
mystical conception which all preachers condemned, is only 
a passionate desire to leave the monastic prison to live at 
large and at liberty among people who act and talk. One 
of the most celebrated contemporaries of Philip Augustus, 
the philosopher and theologian, Alain of Lille, spoke of it 
in no-^uncertain terms : 

" The acedia makes one rebel against the severity of the rule in 
the cloister. They wish to eat more delicately, to sleep on softer 
beds, to lessen the watching, to observe the rule of silence less, or 
even break it entirely. It is this which nourishes vice, and takes 
the monk away from his abbey." 

Thus one sees the church taking more severe and minute 
precautions to hold the monk and prevent him from quitting 
his frock. In all the acts of the councils, in all the statutes 
of the diocesan synods, there is on this point a prohibitory 
article. " The monk who leaves his frock shall be excom- 
municated," says the council of Paris in 1213. A canon of 
the same council orders the walling up of the little doors 
of the monastery, in order to take away all occasion and all 
temptation to misconduct. The synodal statute of Eudes, 
bishop of Toul, which dates from 1192, excommunicates fugi- 
tive monks. The reform rule of Cluny, promulgated by the 
abbot Hugh V in 1203, contains a whole chapter relative 



186 SOCIAL FEANCE 

to the monks who went outside the doors of the abbey with- 
out permission. 

" For it often happens that our monks go about among the houses 
in the villages and in the woods saying and doing that which they 
should not say and do, from which it results that we are blamed 
and the people are scandalized; therefore every monk going outside 
the monastery must have a letter from his abbot, a permit in good 
and correct form to leave." 

And the reform of the abbey of Saint-Victor of Marseilles, 
published in 1195 by Pope Celestine III, added the now well- 
known precaution, " The monk who goes into the town shall 
never go alone: the abbot or the prior shall send with him 
an honest companion." 

But what could rules, prohibitions, and anathemas do 
against the irresistible fojce which drew the monk from his 
cloister? Any pretext for leaving seemed good to him, and 
he used them freely. 

Here, according to a sermon of Peter Comestor is a monk 
who is sick, or who says he is sick, and who, in order to 
recuperate, asks to return for a little while to his own 
country : 

" Under the pretext of ill health he goes to his relatives ; he 
returns to his native soil, to breathe for a few days the purer air, 
the air of his childhood ; and when he returns he pays close attention 
to the time of his entrance; he never returns at mealtime or at 
prayers, for he dislikes a dish of cooked ribs, of the vegetables pre- 
pared without gravy, the watered wine, and the silence and mortifica- 
tion of the cloister." 

There are other monks, and they are numerous, who leave 
the abbey to study in the schools, especially in Paris, where 
the student life, as we have seen, was not without its charms. 
These latter gave excellent reasons to justify their absence 
and their travels: they needed to study medicine, to heal 
their sick brethren, and law, to conduct the lawsuits of the 
community with good results. But the monk-scholars soon 
became legion: so that ecclesiastical authorities became wor- 
ried, and finally took measures to keep the cloisters from be- 
ing further deserted. Already the council of Tours, in 1163, 
had pronounced with severity against them. It prohibited 



THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 187 

the study of law and medicine, especially to those who had 
made profession of monastic life. Orders were given them to 
repair to their abbeys in two months, under pain of excom- 
munication, and those who returned should have the last 
place among the monks in the choir, in the chapter, in the 
refectory, and should lose all hope of promotion to any dig- 
nity unless the mercy of the Holy See disposed otherwise. 
This prohibition was renewed in 1213 at the council of Paris. 
And in his famous bull Super speculam, 1219, which pro- 
hibited the study of law in the university of Paris, Pope 
Honorius III had a very harsh word for those monks who 
became students: " They no longer endure," said he, " the 
monastic silence. They repulse the law of God which con- 
verts souls, that law which they should love more than gold 
or precious stones." And why this flood of monks in the 
great schools? It is because they liked to mingle with the 
crowd, to reap the applause of the vulgar, and to amuse the 
ladies '-maids, *' ad pedisequas amplectandas." It is a pope 
who says this. To the monks who vainly multiplied objec- 
tions and gave plausible reasons to justify their absence in 
the schools, Pope Honorius wished to have the penalty, de- 
creed by the council of Tours, rigorously applied : excommuni- 
cation without heed of an appeal to Rome. \ 

There was a whole category of monks and nuns whom it 
was very difficult to retain in the cloister, and these were the 
noble lords and great ladies who entered the cloister because 
of weariness, remorse, or lack of quiet and repose. After 
some time they perceived that the monastic rule was harsh; 
they were homesick for the world, its liberties and its joys, 
and they doffed the cowl and returned to chateau life. "What 
abbot could stop them? But the example was bad for the 
ordinary monks from the common people, and they utilized all 
opportunities which presented themselves for leaving the 
cloister and having provisional liberty with alacrity. 

The bands which plagued all central France at the begin- 
ning of Philip Augustus' reign collected a great number of 
exiles and fugitives from all provinces : men and women with 
lost reputations, monks, canons, nuns — a medley of adven- 
turers and adventuresses who had abandoned ecclesiastical 
robes and now gave themselves over to every excess. 



188 SOCIAL FRANCE 

There is on this subject an amusing tale of the year 1183, 
which is recorded in a biography of "William Marshal in 
French verse. William was one day riding in Brie with his 
squire, Eustache of Bertrimont: 

" He wished to sleep so he threw himself down by the side of 
the road, while the squire loosened the bridles of the horses and 
let them graze. While Marshal slept there passed a man and a 
woman both of fine appearance and mounted upon large, swift horses. 
The two travelers had considerable baggage packed on their mounts 
and were traveling rapidly. Just at the moment when they passed 
near Marshal the woman said in a low voice : ' God, how tired I 
am.' - Marshal awoke, and asked who it was : ' Sire,' answered 
Eustache, ' it is a man and a woman, traveling at a great rate ; they 
have a rich equipage.' ' Put on the bridles,' said Marshal, ' for I 
want to know whence they come, whither they are going, and who 
they are.' He mounted at once but in his haste forgot to take his 
sword. Having overtaken the travelers he plucked the man by the 
sleeve of his riding-coat and demanded who he was. ' Sire,' answered 
the other, whom this question visibly annoyed, ' I am a man.' ' By 
my head,' said Marshal, ' I know right well that you are no animal.' 
The other disengaged himself and put his hand on his sword. ' You 
are looking for a quarrel?' said Marshal. 'You shall have it. 
Eustache, bring my sword.' The stranger hastily dismounted, but 
Marshal followed, and seizing him by the riding-hood pulled it so 
rudely that it came off; and then he saw that it was the handsomest 
monk one could find on this side of Cologne. ' Ha ! ' said Marshal, 
* I have found you out. Who are you and who is this woman ? ' 

"Much ashamed, the monk confessed that the woman was his 
mistress, that he was taking her from her country, and that at 
present they were going to a foreign land. ' Tell me, young woman, 
who are you and of what family ? ' ' Sire,' answered the young 
woman, weeping, ' I am of Flanders, sister of Raoul of Lens.' ' Girl, 
you are foolish. If you will promise to give up this folly, I will 
reconcile you with your brother, whom I know very well.' ' Sire, 
I will never be seen in the country where I am known.' ' Well, at 
least,' said Marshal, ' that being the case, have you money with 
which to live ? ' The monk raised the skirt of his riding coat, and 
took off a large belt. ' Certainly,' said he, ' here is our money. 
Here are forty-eight livres ! ' ' And what are you going to do with 
them, my friend ? How do you plan to live with this money ? ' 
' I'll tell you ; I have no intention of investing these deniers, but 
I shall deposit them in some foreign village and we will live on the 
income.' ' A usurer,' said Marshal, ' by the sword of Gcd that shaU 
never be! Take the money, Eustache! Since you refuse to return, 
go, and the devil be with you ! ' 

" Marshal went to his inn. There he found Seignior Baldwin and 
Hugh of Hamelineourt, who had arrived before him, and who 



THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 189 

laughed at him, saying, ' Marshal, you are late. You are making 
us fast.' ' Seigniors, do not regret it. I have made a winning 
of which you shall have your share. Eustache, the money ! ' 
Eustache threw the money before them. Marshal sai4 to them: 
* Take enough to pay your pledges.' ^ * Marshal,' they asked, ' where 
did this money come from?' 'Have patience and I shall tell you 
presently.' They ate joyously, and counted the money which really 
amounted to forty-eight livres. Then Marshal told them in detail 
how he had gotten the money. *By God's lips,' exclaimed Master 
Hugh, * you were too good to leave them their horses and baggage. 
Here, my horse! For, by my faith, I want them to have an affair 
with me.' But Marshal restrained him." 

Thus, one after another, the regular clergy left the cloister 
and lived in contact with the profane world. Monks of the 
court, of the army, fugitive and unfrocked monks, appeared 
in greater numbers than ever before. It was one of the 
signs of the new time. 



However, in the great majority of convents, though the 
monk had become more unsettled, he had, in his method of 
thought and feeling, remained what he was in the past 
century. 

His state of mind must be guessed at, for it cannot be 
positively ascertained. Men of the middle ages generally had 
no conception of autobiography: they did not analyze them- 
selves for the satisfaction of being talked of, or preserve 
themselves for the curiosity of a future generation. Conse- 
quently, we can only get at their psychology indirectly, taking 
them unawares, as it were. We extract it from their writings. 

But the writers of monastic society belong to three cate- 
gories: monks who composed treatises on theology, some 
philosophic works, or sermons; monks who wrote chronicles, 
biographies, or history; and, finally, literary monks, men of 
wit, poets, especially satirists, troubadours clad in the robe, 
and, therefore, one must add, very irregular monks. 

What do the theologians, the philosophers, or the authors 
of sermons tell of themselves? Practically nothing. In their 
works of tiresome scholasticism, stuffed with verses and cita- 

* That is, to redeem objects pawned in order to pay debts. 



190 SOCIAL FRANCE 

tions from sacred books, there is not the least personal note. 
Not one gives the life, habits, or surroundings of the author. 
All that is evident from the confused mass is that the minds 
which compiled it were endowed with a remarkable capacity 
for abstraction and a curious passion for the most bizarre 
subtilities. It was a time when they strove to find an alle- 
gorical and mystical meaning in every word of the Holy 
Scriptures — ^the golden age of subtile paraphrase, of Byzantine 
commentary. The monk employed in this work treasures of 
ingenuity and patience. He did not always subtilize in soli- 
tude on parchment, for his own pleasure alone. When he 
was a preacher, as he frequently was toward the end of the 
twelfth century, he shared with the faithful his refinement 
of ideas, and the auditor, whether he comprehended or not, 
went into ecstasies. 

Among the innumerable commentaries on the Canticles 
which the middle ages have bequeathed to us, that of a 
Cistercian monk, named Thomas, is one of the chief works of 
allegorical interpretation. This monk already employed sym- 
bolism, and the most skilled symbolists of after times doubt- 
less had some diifficulty in rising to his level. Each of the 
expressions of living tenderness, of which the Canticles are 
full, gives the occasion for a dissertation, according to rule, 
where the abstractive and analytical mania rages without limit 
and without check. The nature of the subject and the candor 
with which the author undertakes the grossest explanations 
makes citation difficult. One example will suffice. 

In the first verse of the Canticle, the wife says to her hus- 
band, Osculetur me osculo oris sui [Let him kiss me with the 
kisses of his mouth] , and this passionate appeal Thomas the 
Cistercian explains thus: 



"It is the cry of the Jewish nation, which knows that Christ 
must come into the world, as it has been told by the angels, and 
by the prophets. This is why, desirous of seeing Him, she cries 
Osculetur me, that is to say, she longs for Christ to come, instruct, 
and save her. He must not send His angels, patriarchs, or prophets ; 
He must come Himself in person. And what is this kiss which she 
desires, osculum ejus? It is the knowledge which issues from His 
own lips. Let Him come then, that I may learn from Him what 
I ought to know." 



THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 191 

There follows a very long disquisition on the kiss, of which 
the author distinguishes four species. Then he even analyzes 
the kiss, learnedly decomposing it into its physiological ele- 
ments; finally, comes a study of the diverse ways in which 
it is given — all defined, subdivided, rigorously classified, and 
symbolically interpreted. By this one can judge the rest. 
The allegorical commentary on the tenth verse is also very 
interesting, but it defies translation. 

It will suffice to glance over the sermons of the preachers 
then most in vogue — the abbot of Sainte-Genevieve, Stephen 
of Tournai, Absalon, the abbot of Saint- Victor, the Abbot 
Adam of Perseigne, and Alain of Lille, who has been called 
the " Universal Doctor," — to discover the current allegories 
and the popular symbolisms. They handed them on from 
pulpit to pulpit, and the audience heard them over and over, 
always with pleasure. "We give only two of them: Le Char 
spirituel and Le Verhe qui se conjugue. 

The " spiritual chariot " is that which conveys the soul 
of the just. It has four wheels: the two front wheels are 
the love of God and fellowman; the two rear wheels are the 
incorruptibility of the body and the integrity of the soul. 
In the first wheel the hub is the knowledge of the Lord, the 
spokes which radiate from it are meditation, and the tire 
of the wheel is devotion. And thus with the other wheels. 
The axle which joins the back wheels represents the peace 
of God, and that joining the front wheels represents the up- 
rightness of intention. The bullocks which draw the chariot 
are the angels yoked to the beam by the bonds of the love 
of man. In order that the chariot may not jostle on the 
stones of the road, it must have before it the thought of the 
presence of God, behind it the scorn of the world, to the left 
strength of mind in adversity, to the right good use of pros- 
perity. And whither goes this allegorical chariot? To the 
celestial Jerusalem. 

The conjugable Word (verhe) is the application of gram- 
mar to religion. It concerns the Holy Word: that is to say, 
the second person of the Trinity. But this Word belongs 
to four conjugations: to the first conjugation in the bosom 
of the Virgin, to the second in the baptismal font, to the 
third on the table of the altar, to the fourth in the soul of 



192 SOCIAL FRANCE 

the just. We shall state only why it is of the first conjuga> 
tion in the bosom of the Virgin; because it unites itself to 
human nature only through love of us, and because the word 
which represents the act of loving, amare, is the model of the 
first conjugation. Moreover, the Word is at the same time 
active, passive, neuter, and deponent; active, because Christ 
was active in His preaching; passive, because Christ suf- 
fered the passion in the pretorium and on the cross ; neuter, 
because, after having given up the ghost, Christ was wrapped 
in a shroud and put in a tomb; deponent, because, having 
descended into hell, Christ deposed the mighty — that is, the 
devils, from their thrones. Finally, the Word manifests itself 
also in a series of modes: indicative, by the incarnation and 
preaching ; imperative, by the passion and the cross ; optative, 
by the resurrection and the ascension ; infinitive, by glory and 
eternity. 

Scholastic education left an ineffaceable trace on the monk. 
Instilling into him from infancy the love for playing on 
words, of antitheses, of metaphors, of bad taste, and extrava- 
gant allegory, it gave him an intellectual malady which the 
long reflections in the leisure moments of monastic life 
brought to an acute state. 

The monastic historian, who collects contemporary facts 
and sets them down in the form of dry chronological annals 
or of more devout narratives, does not escape the contagion. 
Witness Rigord, that monk of Saint-Denis, a physician by 
profession, who made himself the historian of Philip Augus- 
tus. He is a student who knows the sacred and profane 
authors and practises subtile exposition. His chronicles are 
strewn with quotations from the Old and New Testaments, 
and in his dedicatory epistle he finds means of slipping in 
some verses from Horace and Virgil. He has a very keen 
taste for etymology. Why does he give the surname Augus- 
tus to his hero, King Philip? Because this king, like the 
Cgesars of Rome, had considerably increased the territory of 
France, (Augustus, from the verb augeo, auges, he says), 
and also because he was born in the month of August, 
augusto mense. Rigord does not give his choice between 
these etymologies; he takes both into account. And he does 
not fail to tell us apropos of the paving of the streets of 



THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 193 

Paris, undertaken by Philip Augustus, that the ancient name 
of Paris was Lutetia, the muddy, from lutum, the mud. But 
the word Paris itself he derived from Paris, son of Priam, 
whence an enormous digression devoted to the genealogy of 
the descendants of Priam, and to the history of the Trojan 
origin of France. The monk of Saint-Denis accepts with 
entire confidence all the genealogical fables which he did not 
himself invent, and he exhibits quite a scholarly precision : it 
was in the year 895 B.C. that twenty-three thousand Trojans, 
coming from Sicambria, established themselves at Lutetia and, 
in memory of the son of Priam, gave themselves the name 
of Parisii. Here, however, a scruple of conscience obliges 
him to repeat that the name Parisii had been explained in 
another way: that it had come from the Greek word parisia, 
which means audacious, bold. The Parisians are the auda- 
cious ones, Franks preeminently. And he continues his 
digression by a long resume of the history of the Merovingian, 
Carolingian, and Capetian kings. 

Among the monks the refinement of pedantic subtility 
was allied with an infantile credulity. Rigord believed 
in astrology. He makes note of all prodigies which he has 
heard spoken of and gives a large place to miracles in his 
history. He not only repeats the extraordinary cures which 
have been performed in his time at the abbey of Saint-Denis 
by contact with the relics of saints — infants brought to life, 
the blind and paralytic healed, etc., — but he even introduces 
miracles into the life of Philip Augustus, into the wars 
against the feudal lords and the Plantagenets. The Capetian 
kings are to him providential and almost superhuman be- 
ings, the objects of divine manifestations and protection. 
To give an idea of the state of mind of this monk of Saint- 
Denis, it wiU be enough to quote a page of his history de- 
voted to the year 1187: 

" This same year at the feast of Saint Luke, in the month of 
October, Pope Urban III died: he had reigned one year and 
a half. His successor was Gregory VIII, who held the see a naonth 
and a half. The latter was replaced the same year by Pope Clement 
III, a Roman by birth." 

It was a lamentable fact, these changes of popes, who be- 
came popes only to die in the chair of Saint Peter: 



194 SOCIAL FRANCE 

" It is the result of faults committed by the popes themselves, and 
also of the disobedience of men, their subjects, who refuse to return 
to righteousness by the grace of God, for no one can come out 
from Babylon — ^that is the confusion of disorder and transgression — 
by his own strengih or his own knowledge: for that it is necessary 
that God grant us His grace. The world is growing old; everything 
grows old here below, and becomes decrepit, or rather falls again 
into infancy * 

But here is what especially terrified the historian and led 
him to see everything on the dark side. It is that " all the 
infants, who were born in the year that Jerusalem was taken 
by Saladin, had only twenty or twenty-two, instead of the 
usual thirty or thirty-two teeth." 

Let us not judge Rigord by this bizarre observation. One 
cannot say that he merits no confidence as a historian or 
that he was completely lacking in critical judgment. He 
expresses himself thus in his preface: " I have related those 
facts which I have seen with my own eyes, and others upon 
which I have informed myself with care. Those which I 
had no means of testing, I have omitted." Truly, Rigord 's 
history transgresses much more by its omissions than by 
its lack of exactitude; at least, in the things touching con- 
temporary events. He has even a certain concern for 
truth and justice, a good feature in a semi-ofiicial his- 
torian who relates the facts and actions of an all-powerful 
king. In the first part of the chronicle he makes Philip 
Augustus a hero, endowed with all virtues, but in the second 
he reproaches him frankly for his conduct toward Ingeborg 
of Denmark and the readiness with which he extorted money 
from his clergy. He exliibits a supreme candor in telling 
how he came to undertake his work and through what trials 
he had to pass to finish it. The first difficulty was the lack 
of resources and of time and the necessity of working to 
live, acquisitio victualium: medicine in the middle ages did 
not always support man. It was only when he had become 
a monk at Saint-Denis that Rigord had the food and assured 
protection and could go seriously to work. Another diffi- 
culty was the lack of experience. His pen was not practised 
in beautiful language; it wrote things with too much sim- 
plicity. Finally, the last obstacle was the difficulty of ascer- 



THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 195 

taining the truth in the midst of passionate judgments and 
contrary meanings which obscured it. ''It is astonishing," 
says he, " how human kind, from its origin, is rather in- 
clined to condemn than to be indulgent, and with what 
facility we take things in bad part. Everything is deceit and 
.falsehood here below. Ill is spoken of those who are good, 
those who are bad are justified; how can one tell where he 
is? " And this scruple tormented the historian so much 
that he was one day on the point of destroying his book, 
the fruit of ten years' labor; but his abbot (happily for 
Philip Augustus and the history of France) dissuaded him. 
Despite his impartiality and a certain straightforwardness, 
one must note in him one very strong passion — the hatred 
of the Jews. He reproaches them, in the first place, with 
possessing half of Paris and of demanding, as pitiless 
creditors, what was due them; and- he further accuses them 
of killing Christian children and of desecrating the sacred 
vessels which their creditors confided to them as security. It 
was the popular prejudice. Rigord breaks into lyrical ex- 
pression when, toward the beginning of his reign, Philip 
Augustus, with as much brutality as cynicism, plundered 
the perfidious Jews (perfidi Judei). He was not less happy 
when, ten years later, the same king of France, at Brie- 
Comte-Robert, burned eighty Jews, accused of having hanged 
a Christian. Rigord is in this also of his age, an age the 
passing of which is not to be regretted. 

Another monastic historian is Bernard Itier, who was li- 
brarian and chronicler of the abbey of Saint-Martial of 
Limoges. He had been a monk for forty-eight years of his 
life, from 1177-1225: that is, during all the reign of Philip 
Augustus and even a little more. He passed regularly 
through all the grades of his profession to the dignity of 
precentor. His chronicle, which is essentially local, is above 
all devoted to acquainting us with what happened at Limoges 
and in the region thereabouts. Bernard Itier from time to 
time, by some few brief words, calls to mind the great 
events of the political history of the time, the salient facts 
about the Plantagenet kings and Philip Augustus, the 
Albigensian crusade, the third crusade, and always in a very 
scant way; he seems absolutely to ignore the battle of Bou- 



196 SOCIAL FRANCE 

vines. However, this monk did not remain confined without 
stirring from his abbey ; he also, like all other monks of his 
time, felt the need of travel and the change of atmosphere. 
One sees him now at Poitou, where he himself says he re- 
mained more than three years ; then at Grandmont, at Cluny, 
at Clermont, at Puy-en-Velay, at La Chaise-Dieu, at Saint- 
Martin of Tours. Pilgrimages nearly always: a pilgrimage 
was a very convenient thing for monks who could not ac- 
commodate themselves to seclusion- 
Open-minded, Itier did not occupy himself solely with 
guarding manuscripts, putting beautiful bindings on them, 
and covering the margins with historical notes. He did a 
little of everything : philosophy, ethics, natural history, music, 
and Latin verse. But in all this there is nothing personal or 
original: simply reminiscences of authors of antiquity and 
the early middle ages, a patchwork of quotations put end 
to end, resumes of the knowledge of others. He wrote a kind 
of manual of philosophy, in the form of a catechism, with 
questions and answers. " What is philosophy? The love 
of wisdom, for the Greeks called pJiilo love, and sophia wis- 
dom. How is philosophy defined? It is the knowledge of 
things human and divine. Into how many parts is philosophy 
divided? Into three parts: physics, ethics or morals, and 
logic. Into how many parts is physics divided ? Four parts : 
arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Into how many 
parts is ethics divided? Into four parts: prudence, justice, 
courage, and temperance." And so it goes on. There is here 
an evident effort to state the definitions precisely and 
in a concise form. Here is his definition of man, " Man is 
an animal who laughs, who has reason, who is subject to 
death, and capable of good and evil." This monk of the 
twelfth century localizes in the brain certain faculties of 
intelligence. The ability to comprehend, the ingenium, has 
its seat in the front part of the head. How does he prove 
this? It is because the physicians, he says, have stated that 
a man, well endowed with this faculty, loses it when he 
receives a wound in that part of the head. Likewise, there 
'exists in the back part of the head a cell of the brain, 
guaedam cellula cerebri, where the memory resides; when 
this place is wounded, the memory disappears. In speaking 



THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 197 

thus, it is true Bernard Itier invented nothing; he read it, 
and admits it, in an ancient author. 

He also cultivated allegory and symbolism. In matters of 
subtility he is not exceeded by that monk who was spoken 
of above. For him pride is a tree the trunk of which produces 
seven principal branches, which are the seven capital sins, 
from which come in the form of lesser branches all the vices 
of mankind. In order to overcome these capital sins and 
vices, one must turn to God, and this is the object of the 
seven petitions of the Lord's Prayer. Thanks to these seven 
petitions, one obtains the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, 
with the gifts of the Holy Ghost are obtained the seven virtues, 
and finally one is given the seven beatitudes. The number 
seven is sacred; it is a perfect number. It is found every- 
where : the seven words of Jesus on the cross, the seven peni- 
tential psalms, the seven canonical letters, the seven damna- 
tions, the seven stars shining in the north, the seven rules of 
discourse, the seven tables of ancient law, the seven degrees 
for attaining the contemplation of the Lord, the seven 
mountains of gold which the Greeks said were sisters, etc. 
Some lines lower, the monk of Limoges also celebrates the 
number twelve. 

He exhibits the same abuse of scholasticism as others, the 
same naivete which sees prodigies everywhere, and the same 
tendency to carefully collect the various facts about mon- 
strosities, miracles, and horoscopes. Bernard Itier was con- 
vinced that those who were born upon Christmas day would 
die a violent death, and he mentions examples. If the walls 
of the Chateau of Limoges crumbled one day in the year 
,1203, it was because the day before some excommunicated 
priests had chanted near that part of the ramparts. In the 
resume of universal history which precedes his own recital 
of contemporary events, the reign of the Emperor Theodosius 
is sammarized by this single fact: in the village of Emmaus, 
in Palestine, a child was born, who was double above the 
navel — he had two breasts and two heads, and the two parts 
of the human trunk had a separate life; while one ate and 
drank the other took nothing for nourishment; while one 
slept the other was awake. Sometimes, however, the chron- 
icler adds, these two children played together and wept to- 



198 SOCIAL FEANCE 

gether. They lived two years. And, under the year 1203, 
he writes:^ " One day, in the abbey of Souterraine, the 
monks were singing at matins the anthem Spiritus sanctus 
in te descendet, Maria, when suddenly the church was en- 
tirely illuminated by an intense light, to the great stupefac- 
tion of those present." In 1198, there died William, bishop 
of Poitiers, by whom Bernard Itier had been in former times 
ordained deacon. A great number of miracles were worked 
at his tomb. Bernard was a little astonished, and asked 
what virtue had been worth this honor. He discovered that 
the prelate had been a very charitable and patient man; 
"" however," said he, "as he seemed to have led a life of 
sloth, there have been some people who found that the wor- 
ship of his relics was not absolutely justified." 

After all, Itier was not a fanatical admirer of everything 
connected with religion and the church. He was sometimes 
outspoken. Under the year 1209 he says, apropos of a legate 
of the pope, the Cardinal Gualo, and the exactions of which 
the clergy of France were then the victims, " Gualo, the 
legate, exasperated many people, midtos exasperavit." The 
word is striking. It explains the severity with which other 
monks discuss the cardinal Rome had sent to France. 

The monk of Saint-Martial of Limoges possessed certain 
virtues for his profession of historian: he was generally ex- 
act, and he was fairly impartial. He searched for the truth 
with care, as is proved by the passage in his history which 
he himself corrected when he found that he had been de- 
ceived by false information, or he tells us of his uncertainty 
of what has been said. He does not take in everything with- 
out criticism. Like Rigord, he is credulous; he gives proof 
of a certain method in his choice of historical facts, at least 
for the time in which he lived. He has his preferences, his 
passions, but one scarcely sees them, for he almost always con- 
tents himself with setting down the facts without giving a 
personal appreciation. Can one reproach him for believing 
that Saint Martial, the patron of his abbey, had been an 

1 The original reads : " Et voild pour le regne de Theodose ! " This is 
clearly a mistake, as appears from the allusion to Emperor Theodosiua 
a few lines above, and a comparison with the original. Hence the change 
in the translation. — Translator. 



THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 199 

apostle and lived in the circle about Christ? All the people 
of Limousin were convinced of this: to have doubts on this 
point was a crime of high treason against one's birthplace. 
No more should one be astonished that he interests himself 
in the success of the crusaders, in the war against the 
Albigenses. He even voluntarily exaggerates it. He speaks 
of thirty thousand heretics killed at Beziers, of twenty thou- 
sand at Lavaur, which is a gross exaggeration. But all these 
massacres make for the greater glory of the Lord, and this 
monk, in his fashion, exterminated as many heretics as he 
could. 

He has no more love for the infidel and their chief, 
Mohammed — " a false prophet," he says, " who taught that 
every man who killed his enemy, or was killed by his enemy, 
entered Paradise." And what a Paradise! A carnal Para- 
dise, where ran rivers of wine, honey, and milk; where only 
the basest pleasures and all sorts of things full of luxury 
and foolishness, quaedam luxuria et stulticia, are known; in 
short, a Paradise where there are too many women; and, 
according to Bernard, woman is the greatest enemy of man, 
the cause of all evil and of all the vices of humanity. 

We here recognize one of the axioms of ecclesiastical edu- 
cation which furnished so many of the virile tirades to 
preachers and passionate satires to moralists of the tonsure. 
One monk composed a special treatise, where he brought 
together a whole series of historical examples of women who 
had drawn men iato grave faults or dangerous errors, and 
he also drew up a list of celebrated persons who had been 
persecuted by women. Woman is merely the image of 
Antichrist. What is the most enormous of all crimes ? Adul- 
tery. Those guilty of it are not to be pitied. This infrac- 
tion of the divine law, Bernard Itier assures us, will not be 
pardoned in this world or in the next. 

Whatever they do with theology and history, these monks 
are, in the last analysis, merely grown-up children, molded 
by prejudice. They put a naive ardor into the search for 
historical truth or the analysis of philosophical ideas and 
morals. But, above all, they amuse themselves with the exer- 
cises of scholastic philosophy. It is thus that Bernard Itier, 
the historian and philosopher, turns some Latin verses, and 



200 SOCIAL FRANCE 

composes some acrostics and enigmas. The day when he 
took it into his head to write in the manuscript of his history- 
words exclusively composed of consonants or with the vowels 
replaced by dots, he must have been well pleased with him- 
self : he had found a new game. 



Besides the monks who are philosophers, historians, and 
theologians, there are the poets. Without doubt, the stran- 
gest of them all is Guyot of Provins, a monk of Champagne. 
We know little of his life: only what he himself tells us 
in his Bible, written between 1203 and 1208; and 
that is practically nothing. We do not even know where 
he was a monk. It comes out in his verses that he wore the 
black robe, that his abbey depended on Cluny, and that he 
had been a monk for a dozen years when he wrote his work. 
He seems, however, to have passed four months at Clairvaux 
among the Cistercians, the White monks, but he does not 
appear to have adopted their habit, or to have followed their 
rule. His satirical humor strikes with the same spirit at the 
Black and White monks, as we shall presently see. He seems 
to have been of burgher stock and without means. Before 
entering his cloister, he had led the life of many of the 
trouveres of humble condition, strolling with his verses and 
his music from chateau to chateau, and from court to court. 
For, if we believe him, he must have known personally almost 
all the kings and great barons of northern France and of 
Burgundy at the end of the twelfth century. He had even 
traveled abroad, for he is said to have seen the king of 
Aragon, Alfonso II, and a king of Jerusalem, Amauri, and 
to have been present at the famous court held at Mainz by 
the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa in 1184. He was a 
poet-errant, who probably traveled in the retinue of some 
great lord at his expense. The proverb, " a rolling stone 
gathers no moss," could well be applied to him, for it is 
certain that, at the approach of old age, he was obliged 
to become a monk, to secure a living and shelter. Many 
men of letters of the time did this. Guyot, to be sure, had 
a decidedly feeble stock of religious devotion: this is 
brought out by the way in which he expresses himself con- 



THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 201 

cerning his fellow-monks and aU the dignitaries of the 
church in general, and also in all the passages of the Bible 
where he discloses his personal sentiments on the obligations 
of monastic life. He was not made for the cloister with 
its mortifications. 

This should not surprise us. To-day, one is a monk be- 
cause he chooses to be; but it was not so in the middle ages. 
In the time of Philip Augustus, the number of people who 
were cloistered in spite of their wishes, the number who were 
monks or nuns in spite of themselves, was considerable. One 
must not suppose that the personnel of the monasteries was 
entirely composed of devotees or reformed sinners. Faith 
and penitence alone would not have peopled the abbeys and 
innumerable priories which then covered the soil of France. 
Recall that in each noble family — -and these families were 
then numerous — there were sons and daughters whom parents 
from the cradle destined for the monastic life; remember 
that younger sons left without fortunes, and daughters on 
the unattached list, voluntarily imprisoned themselves in the 
cloister; in exchange for a little land or income, they there 
found a fairly sure shelter and bread for each day. The 
weak in this way evaded the struggle of life. Recall, also, 
that some entered the cloister out of pure ambition, knowing 
that the cloister led to the bishopric and to the highest posi- 
tions of the church. Recall, finally, that abbeys even served 
as houses of discipline and that more or less repentant crimi- 
nals were shut up there; the religious life was for them an 
expiation, and the monastery a prison. 

This was not the case with Guyot of Provins. But he, 
like many others, does not appear to love his profession. 
This monk absolutely lacks enthusiasm, and he allows it to 
be seen in a most nai've fashion. He tells of the austerities 
which they practised in the order of Chartreux, and he enu- 
merates them with a kind of dismay: 

"For nothing in the world would I be a Carthusian; their rule 
is too harsh. Each monk is obliged to do his own cooking, to eat 
alone, and to sleep in a solitary cell. When I see them blowing 
and kindling their fires it seems to me that this is not the duty 
of honest men. I do not know what the dear Lord thinks of it, 
but as for me, I do not wish to live isolated even in Paradise. The 



202 SOCIAL FRANCE 

place where I had no companions would be no paradise for me. It 
is not good to be alone; solitude is a bad life which often engenders 
sadness and anger." 

There was still another thing which Guyot did not like 
among the Carthusians: that is, they did not eat meat, and 
did not even give it to the sick. The harshness of this rule 
grates upon him: 

" These men are murderers of the sick. I would not allow a poor 
man to die before me rather than give him meat. Do they forget 
what the disciples of Jesus Christ ate, and what He Himself said 
to them : Eat such things as are set before you, and whatever meats 
the good God sends you, do not ask from whence your food and 
drink cometh." 

Guyot does not concede that this abstinence from meat is 
necessary to the virtue of the monks. On the contrary, he has 
heard it said by wise people that a diet composed exclusively 
of milk, butter, and cheese is very dangerous. One should, 
then, give meat to the sick, if they desire it. " Decidedly," 
he concludes, " I do not like this order. If I had entered 
it, I should leave the very first day ; and, if my superior did 
not wish to give me leave, I should know where to find a 
corner of the wall to jump over." 

Here is a disposition that is quite unbecoming in a monk; 
for, upon searching, it appears that there is no religious con- 
gregation in which Guyot of Provins would care to live. He 
would like, however, to be a Templar. He would prefer the 
Temple of Cluny, he says. But the order of Templars has 
one great drawback, which is that the brothers are obliged 
to fight, and our monk is nothing less than he is a fighter. 

" The Templars are much honored in Syria. The Turks fear 
them terribly. They defend the chateaus and the ramparts, and 
in battle they never flee. But there is exactly what worries me. 
If I belonged to that order I know very well that I should flee. I 
should not tarry for blows, for I do not dote on them. They fight 
too bravely. I do not care to be killed. I would rather pass for 
a coward and live, than to be the most glorious of earth dead. I 
would sing for hours for them; that would not inconvenience me 
in the least. I would be very exact in the service, but not at the 
hour of battle. There I should completely fail." 



THE MONASTIC SPIEIT 203 

It would be hard to be more candid. This monk of Cluny 
does not even find that at Cluny all goes for the best. One 
cannot talk in the refectory; all night the brethren bray 
(it is his expression) in the church. During the day they 
work without rest. It is only in the refectory that one can 
sometimes rest. But there are other drawbacks : 

" They give us bad eggs and unshelled beans. What often arouses 
my wrath is that the wine is too thin; they have put in too much 
of what the oxen drink. No, I will never get drunk on convent 
wine. At Cluny it is better to die than to live." 

And Guyot ends by sighing for the rule of canons of Saint 
Augustine. " Blessed be Saint Augustine. His canons have 
good meat and good wine in abundance." 

We now know with what kind of a monk we have to deal. 
This naive simplicity has a great charm, and one plainly 
sees that Guyot is just the opposite of an ascetic and a 
fanatic. Under it all he has high sentiments. His idea, 
which he expresses in very clear terms, is that the work of 
the religious lif& has no value, if it is not accompanied by 
piety and charity: 

" A congregation is builded in charity and of charity it should 
be full. A monk can indeed be at great pains to read, to sing, to 
work, and to fast, but if he has not charity in his soul it avails him 
nothing to my mind. He is like an empty house in which the spiders 
spin and wind their webs, and then immediately destroy what they 
have spun. Singing and fasting are not what save the soul, but 
charity and faith." 

Observe this declaration of principle. By it Guyot of 
Provins appears to place himself ahead of his time, a time 
when religion was almost wholly in the works, when general 
belief attributed an absolute efficacy to the external prac- 
tices of worship, and especially to the cult of the saints and 
of relics. One is not astonished that, permeated by such a 
principle, our monk, in reviewing the various congregations, 
including his own, found occasion to use his satirical humor, 
which is not malicious, for he declared at the beginning of 
his poem that he would tell the whole truth without attack- 
ing individuals, and he kept his word. He wisely adhered 



204 SOCIAL FRANCE 

to generalities. With this reservation, we must admit that 
Guyot was not gentle with the monks of any color, his broth- 
ers, and that no order found grace in his eyes. What he says 
of each of them, making allowances for the exaggeration of 
the satire, is of very great interest for our study. He com- 
mences with the Black monks, those of Cluny, and reproaches 
the abbots of that order with being poor administrators, who 
ruin the priory by exploitation and who have installed in 
the cloister three ugly, foul, and cruel old women: treachery, 
hypocrisy, and simony. Then he passes to the White order, 
that of Clairvaux or Citeaux, an order in which the life is 
hard and where one finds the least of fraternity. The Cis- 
tercians have no pity for each other. They think only of 
acquiring land and money; they covet everything they see, 
and frighten the poor people, whom they despoil of their 
lands and reduce to begging. At home the plain monks are 
miserable, but the heads of the monasteries, the abbots and 
the cellarers, treat themselves well. They have the money, 
the meats, and the big fish. They have a twofold weakness: 
they drink the clear wine and send the cloudy to the refec- 
tory. "It is fraternity inverted. I would rather be in 
Persia than in a wretched cloister where there is no pity." 

We already know that our monk reproaches the Carthu- 
sians with an excessive austerity and harshness in the treat- 
ment of the sick. This is for some reason all the bad he 
says of them. The order of Grandmont pleases him better, 
for he has heard that they mortify themselves less than 
others. The monks talk in the dormitory, the church, and 
in the cloister. They like good fish and hot, well-spiced 
sauces. At night, upon going to bed, they bathe and care- 
fully comb their beards ; ' ' they even cover them and divide 
them into three braids, in order that they may be beautiful 
and glossy on the day they shall be seen by outsiders." But 
what is bad at Grandmont and makes Guyot thankful he is 
not there, is that there are lay brothers, half-laymen, who 
govern the monks and priests, and who strike the true 
monks when they resist: it is a case of cart before the 
horse. This strife and disorder arouses the indignation of 
the author. His allusion to the intestine wars which revo- 
lutionized the order of Grandmont at the time of Philip 



THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 205 

Augustus, and which then resounded throughout the Chris- 
tian world, is noteworthy and confirms what the historical 
documents proper tell us concerning it. We shall come back 
to it. 

Then come the White canons of Premontre. For Guyot 
this is an entirely decadent order. They disagreed, the monks 
fought their abbots, they had great estates which they were 
in danger of losing, were head over ears in debt, did noth- 
ing but sell and mortgage. " What I say of them," adds the 
poet, " could not make them bad. They have done more than 
any one to destroy themselves." The Templars, with their 
white mantles and shining crosses, are the valiant knights, 
who guard their houses well and render justice; but they 
have two vices for which they are severely blamed — covetous- 
ness and pride. With regard to the Hospitalers, Guyot has 
seen them in Jerusalem, but they have forgotten their name j 
although very rich, they are not hospitable and know noth-. 
ing of charity. Another kind of Hospitaler, the lay brothers, 
of the order of Saint Anthony, found no grace before our 
author, who considers them vagabonds and charlatans. He 
depicts them, with bells hanging from the necks of their- 
mounts, soliciting everywhere from Scotland to Antioeh for- 
their hospitals and giving not one sou of all they gather to^ 
the church. In each hospital there were fifty lay brothers^ 
fat and sodden — some having five hundred, others one thou- 
sand, marks. They carried on business and even usury. 
They had wives and children. " The whole country is 
peopled with them," says Guyot, and they marry their 
daughters well. As for Saint Anthony, they do not care two 
straws about him. Finally, even the carpenter Durand, the 
promoter of the brotherhood of White Hoods, or Enca- 
puchonnes of Puy-en-Velay, — of whom we have already 
read the half-legendary history, — is a victim of this pitiless 
critic. Guyot makes him out a vagabond and a trickster, 
who plainly had made his fortune by selling the insignia of 
the brotherhood to a multitude of credulous people. " He 
well knew how to deceive his world, and he deceived two 
hundred thousand." 

This is bold, indeed, in a Benedictine! He spares others 
no more than the secular clergy. Cures, canons, bishops. 



206 SOCIAL FRANCE 

archbishops are all put through the mill. He accuses the 
prelates of seeking money and honor before everything else, 
of selling the things belonging to the church, of being proud 
and covetous. His satire becomes particularly violent and 
spiteful when the cardinals and the papacy are attacked. In 
this connection he shows us how intolerable the exactions 
of the court of Rome and its agents already appeared to 
the clergy of France, and to what degree of exasperation the 
venality of the Holy See and of its representatives had, little 
by little, led them. It recalls the words of the historian, whom 
we quoted above, apropos of Cardinal Gualo, the envoy of 
Innocent III: Gualo legatus multos exasperavit. Guyot of 
Provins seems to be merely paraphrasing the monk of Limoges 
when he speaks of Rome and the Romans: 

" Rome, Rome ! When ■« ilt thou cease to kill mankind 1 Thou 
killest us every day. Christianity is marching backwards. All was 
lost and confounded from the day that thy cardinals were sent. 
They came blazing and on fire with eovetousness ; they came full of 
simony; they came void of reason, without faith, and without re- 
ligion. They sell God and His Mother ; they trample everything with 
their feet and devour all. What do they with the gold and silver 
they take beyond the mountains? If only they made roads, hos- 
pitals, and bridges with it ! " 

Guyot hardly dared to accuse the pope himself of taking 
his part in the plundering of the Christian world, but he 
reproaches him with closing his eyes and allowing it to be 
done. He advises dukes, princes, and kings not to allow 
themselves to be subjected by Rome — advice which Philip 
Augustus and his nobles were not slow to follow, if they 
had not already done it; for it was in 1205 that the king 
and the great barons of France, in a sealed letter, protested 
against the exactions and the abuse of power by the Holy 
See. Finally, the poet ends with this imprecation: 

"Rome sucks us up and devours us. Rome destroys and kills 
everything. Rome is the source of the mischief from which spring 
all evil vices. It is a fishpond full of vermin. Why did not the 
world throw itself on Rome instead of attacking the Greeks ? " 

This monk proceeds with no tender hand. In the time of 
Luther, men said no worse things of Rome and the papacy. 



THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 207 

Gruyot of Provins is bitter when he speaks of polities; he 
is simply good-natured and spiteful when he attacks the 
shortcomings common to certain social classes and diverse 
professions. An old trouvere, he is full of respect for kings 
and great barons. He enumerates with pride all those he 
has known during his travels, and the list is long; but he 
declares that those of the present are very inferior to those 
who lived in his youth. They no longer hold a brilliant court, 
as formerly, and they no longer know how to be generous. 
This is a commonplace in the mouths of all trouveres. And 
then they have the great fault of protecting the Jews and 
keeping them in their lands. Guyot detested Jews, like all 
his fellows, but he especially blamed those princes who em- 
ployed these usurers and benefited by their operations, in- 
stead of putting them out of the country. This is probably 
an allusion to the conduct of Philip Augustus and of several 
feudal lords, notably the count of Champagne. 

Curiously enough, monk though he is, Guyot of Provins is 
not too hard on woman. He says, to be sure, that she is 
false at times, that she is lighter than the wind, that she 
often changes her mind, that she in one day forgets what 
she has loved for many years. But all this is pardonable. 
Woman to him is an enigma that frightens him, and an 
enigma that need not be fathomed. 

" The wisest are led astray when they wish to judge or correct 
a woman. She has never found her master, and who can flatter 
himself that he knows her? When her eyes weep her heart laughs; 
she little considers what she says. I remember Solomon, Constantine, 
and Samson, whom women deceived, and truly I come to the con- 
clusion that I have more hope of understanding the sun and the 
moon, those two marvels, than of understanding what woman is. 
There are men who teach astronomy, necromancy, geometry, law, 
medicine, theology, and music; but I have never known a person, 
at least who was not a fool, to take woman for a subject of study." 

Guyot compensates himself at the end of his poem by 
attacking the theologians — the " divines," as he calls them. 
He eulogizes theology as " the art which crowns the soul, the 
art honored of all," but he depreciates those who practise it. 
They are very adept in language, but they think only of 
making an income. They show others the right road, but 



208 SOCIAL FRANCE 

they do not preach by example. Eegarding the professors 
of jurisprudence, or lawyers, they think only of teaching 
chicanery and trickery, pleading the bad as well as the good, 
and doing anything whatsoever in order to obtain good 
benefices. Finally, comes the turn of the fisiciens — that 
is, the doctors, — against whom our monk seems to have had 
a special grievance, for he heaps on them pleasantries which 
later became proverbial. " They kill numbers of sick, and 
exhaust themselves to find maladies in everybody. They have 
had me in their hands, but I do not like their company when 
I am well. Woe to him who falls into their power." He 
makes fun of their medicines. " I prefer a fat capon to all 
their mixtures." And he finds that those who come from 
Montpellier sell their syrups much too dearly. He, how- 
ever, admits that, if there are some bad doctors, there are 
also some very good ones, who know how to strengthen the 
sick. " When a man is afraid of death, he is in great need 
of comfort, and it is by the confidence which they inspire, 
rather than by their medicines, that the cure is effected. 
When I am sick," concludes Guyot, and it is with this that 
his book ends, ' ' I want some one to bring them to me. Their 
presence does me good. But, when the sickness leaves me, I 
wish that a galley would take them straight to Salonika, 
them and all their physic, so far that one may never see them 
again. ' ' 

This monk is interesting, both for what he tells us of him- 
self and of others. He is an intensely practical spirit; he 
has the good sense to je^r at the bourgeoisie in whose eyes 
the slightest excess is a sin, and to relieve the ennui of the 
cloister by raillery. 

In this Guyot little resembles his contemporary, the monk 
of Auvergne, known in Provencal literature as the monk of 
Montaudon. We must call him this because we do not know 
his family name. Montaudon is the priory of which he was 
the head. He was a singular monk! — the type of those who 
passed their lives outside the cloister and reentered it to rest 
from the fatigue of the world. He was, moreover, a noble 
of the family of the lords of Vic-sur-Cere in Auvergne. 
His father had at an early age shut him up in the neigh- 
boring abbey of Saint-Geraud of Aurillac. The abbot in- 



THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 20^ 

trusted him with the priory of Montaudon. But this monk 
was a writer with an original and sarcastic vein. The lords 
of the region wrangled with him, and his fame was not long 
in spreading beyond Auvergne. He led the life of a trouba- 
dour, while wearing the robes of a monk, and traveled from 
chateau to chateau in all the regions of the south. According 
to his statements, he had seen the Perigord, Limousin, Querci, 
Rouergue, Gevaudan, Provence, Toulousain, Gascony, Poitou, 
Angoumois, Forez, and even Spain, taking his part in all 
the knightly fetes, as judge awarding the prize of a sparrow- 
hawk at the solemn concourse at Puy-en-Yelay. How did the 
abbot of Aurillac tolerate so unmonastie a life in his subordi- 
nate? He dared say little or nothing, because the monk of 
Montaudon, from time to time returned to his priory, 
whither he brought all gifts with which he had been loaded. 
At last he obtained the priory of Villafranea, in Roussillon, 
on the property of his friend, Alfonso II, king of Aragon; 
and the latter, adds the Provengale biographer, " ordered the 
monk of Montaudon to eat of meat, entertain the ladies, and 
to sing and make verses." 

Here is all we know of the life of the monk of Montaudon, 
and it is apparent that the monk is anything but exemplary. 
This is seen especially in his poetry, certain couplets of which 
are absolutely not to be translated. It is not only in Latin 
that words can brave propriety ; they can do it in Provencal, 
and the monk of Montaudon is one of the troubadours who 
defied propriety most brazenly. 

Like all his contemporaries, he wrote love songs addressed 
to the woman of his fancy. But these are not the ones which 
here chiefly interest us. This monk is, above everything else, 
a satirist, and his talent displays itself particularly in the 
sirvente. He wrote one in which he said something bad of 
every troubadour of the time, including himself. He speaks 
of himself in the third person and calls himself " the false 
monk of Montaudon " — the expression is extremely appropri- 
ate — a monk who had quarreled with every one, who had 
left God and the convent for the pleasures of the table, whose 
poetry and songs are fit only to be thrown to the winds. 
He seems, however, to have had some scruples of conscience, 
for, in one of his poems, he tries to justify himself for being. 



210 SOCIAL FRANCE 

such an irregular monk, and to prove that God Himself 
authorized his conduct: 

" The other day I was in Paradise, because I am gay and happy, 
and deeply love the dear God Whom all obey, earth, sea, valleys, and 
mountains. And God said to me : ' Monk, why did you come here, 
and how do you fare at Montaudon, where you have numerous 
companions ? ' * Lord, I remained in the cloister one or two years, 
which was enough to lose the barons' friendship; but Thou art the 
only One Whom I wish to love and serve.' ' Monk,' answered God, 
' do not think that you give Me pleasure in shutting yourself up 
in the abbey. Why let v/ar songs and love-plaints cease? I would 
rather see you sing and laugh. The princes are more generous for 
it, and the priory of Montaudon can only gain by it." 

Thus the monk of Montaudon excuses himself for his in- 
fractions of the rule. 

The works of our monk reveal much less of the sentiments 
and ideals of their author than the Bihle of Guyot of 
Provins does of its composer, for there is not much of them, 
and the extreme conciseness of the style renders the thought 
obscure. He devotes several poems to ridiculing women who 
use paints; and, by way of a jest, which is a little far- 
fetched, he fancies that the saints instituted a suit because 
women had so monopolized the red, black, and white colors, 
to paint themselves, that none was left to color the images 
and statues in the churches. Another series of poems belongs to 
a class of which the productions of the monk of Montaudon are 
almost the only examples in Provencal literature, the class of 
" ennui " (enueg). It consists of enumerating all the things 
that the poet dislikes or which bore him. This would throw 
some light on, at least, the negative tastes and prejudices 
of the monk of Montaudon, if one could find any ethics or 
interesting psychological observations in them. But this is 
not the case, as one can judge from this fragmentary- 
translation : 

"What tires me is a good talker who performs his duty badly, 
a man who always seeks to kill his neighbor, a horse with a hard 
mouth, a noble who wears too haughtily a shield which has received 
no blows, a bearded priest or monk, a reckless slanderer. I cannot 
endure a tiresome woman who is at the same time poor and proud, 
a man too much in love with his wife, knights who make trouble 



THE MONASTIC SPIRIT 211 

outside of their country and at home powder pepper in a mortar. 
What provokes me is a poor falcon, a small helping when there is 
plenty in the kitchen, too much water in a glass of wine, meeting 
a lame person or a blind man on the road; I despise dry, poorly 
cooked meat, a preacher who lies and perjures himself, an old 
woman with bad manners. It annoys me to ride horseback on icy 
roads, or to eat without fire when it is cold." 

And so on. This enumeration of unpleasant things is, on 
the whole, commonplace enough, and tells us little of the 
intimate and personal sentiments of the author. Another 
selection, which serves as the companion-piece of this, is 
just the opposite, for the monk composes a litany of things 
which he likes: 

" Jests and gaiety please me greatly, as also fine deeds, liberality, 
prowess, a courageous and courteous woman who understands rep- 
artee. It pleases me greatly to see a rich and generous man, to 
sleep when it storms and thunders, to have a plump salmon for my 
meal. I also enjoy being near a fountain or a brook in summer, 
when the meadows are fresh and green, and when the birds are 
singing. I am delighted at having a good companion, to feel again 
the caresses of my sweetheart, and to see my enemies unhappy." 

All this we must admit was not very monastic. The prior 
of Montaudon had not risen in his tastes above the almost 
vulgar mediocrity of the great majority of the nobles of 
his country and his time. He, at least, represents well enough 
the type of involuntary monk, the large class of monks 
who, at the wish of their fathers, had been condemned to the 
ecclesiastical life, and subjected themselves as little as pos- 
sible to a profession they had not themselves chosen. 



CHAPTER VII 
MONASTIC LIFE 

The epoch of Philip Augustus was not one of those periods 
of the middle ages which were marked by the founding of a 
large number of abbeys. Beginning with the middle of the 
twelfth century, the ardor of individuals and of the feudal 
princes for these endowments had considerably decreased. 
The large foundations of the various Benedictine brother- 
hoods had been made. Long before the time of Philip 
Augustus, France was covered with the establishments of 
monks and nuns: in other words, the old monastic move- 
ment which, through the voice of powerful reformers of the 
time of the investiture struggle, as though by magic called 
into being the hermitages, rural priories, and the monas- 
teries of the towns and cities — that movement had ceased and 
that feudal period was closed. On the other hand, the new 
monachism of the mendicant orders — by which the France of 
Louis VIII, of Saint Louis, and of Philip the Fair was en- 
dowed with so many Dominican or Franciscan convents and 
churches — had scarcely begun to spread in the latter years 
of the reign of Philip Augustus. His period was then, one 
may say, an intermediate or a neutral period between two 
grand epochs of religious effervescence, marked by the ac- 
tivity and the extraordinary fervor of the builders of the 
abbeys. 

It must not be said that, between 1180 and 1220, no monas- 
tic foundations were created. Although less active than in 
the eleventh and twelfth centuries, faith continued to have an 
influence, and the faithful, still convinced of the efficacy of 
material works, did not leave off establishing religious houses 
and insuring their duration by gifts. Let us take any prov- 
ince : Maine, for example. During the reign of Philip Augus- 
tus, we find in that region alone four foundations, of which 
three are important. In 1188, a seignior of Asse founded 

213 



MONASTIC LIFE 213 

"the abbey of Champagne, where he established the White 
Monks, the Cistercians; in 1189, Bernard, seignior of Ferte, 
founded the abbey of Pelice, with the Black Monks; in 
1204, arose the abbey of Fontaine-Daniel of the order of 
Citeaux, thanks to the donations of a high noble, Juhel III, 
a seignior of Maine; in 1218, finally, a certain Ralph of 
Beaumont founded a new abbey, dependent on the abbey 
of Couture at Mans, the priory of Loue. 

Let us betake ourselves a short distance from Paris into 
the French Vexin, along the road which leads from Chau- 
mont to Trie, in the neighborhood of Grisors and its feudal 
fortress. There, in a very pleasant dale, one still sees a vast 
structure, the ruins of a nunnery, which was rebuilt under 
Louis XIII and Louis XIV; it is the abbey of Gomerfon- 
taine, in which the seigniors of Chaumont-en-Vexin had of 
old chosen interment. The Cistercian abbey of Gomer- 
fontaine was founded in 1207 by Hugh of Chaumont, the 
most powerful lord of the vicinity, and the act of founda- 
tion has come down to us. Here are its essential clauses : 

" I, Hugh of Chaumont, with the consent of my wife, Petronille, 
of my sons John and James, and of my other sons, for the salvation 
of my soul, of the soul of my wife, the soul of my father Galon, and 
of my mother Mathilda, for the salvation of the souls of all my 
predecessors and of all my heirs, I make and concede in pure and 
perpetual alms the following donation ..." 

These first lines give us the religious motives of the 
founder. This lord thought not only of himself and of his 
own welfare in the future world, but of that of all his rela- 
tives and even of all his predecessors. He sought to assure 
Paradise to all. And to whom does he make this gift? '* To 
God," he says, " and to the nuns of the order of Citeaux." 
He gave them his land of Gomerfontaine, with the orchard 
which was hard by, in order that they might serve God in 
that place, in an abbey dedicated at once to God and to the 
Holy Virgin, to Saint John the Baptist, Saint James, Saint 
John the Evangelist, Saint Eustache, and to all the saints. 
Thus, Hugh of Chaumont was not content with a single 
patron for his foundation, as was usual in similar circum- 
stances; the protection of many saints, designated by name. 



214 SOCIAL FRANCE 

was a much better guarantee. He invoked the protection of 
all the saints en masse (omnium sanctorum). There follow 
the provisions intended to complete the donation: 

" I give to said nuns the whole tithe of my eels in the fish-ponds 
of Gomerfontaine and Latinville; a hundred sous each year for 
six years, to enable them to construct their monastery, and a per- 
petual rent of three measures of wheat to be taken from my mill 
of Gomerfontaine." 



There, then, the future of the nuns was assured; but they 
took care to have inserted in the charter some provisional 
clauses : 



" If the aforesaid mill should be destroyed, burned, or suspend 
operation, we pledge ourselves, I and my heirs, to furnish the three 
measures of wheat, securing :hem elsewhere." 



Such is the substance of the charter of foundation of the 
abbey of Gomerfontaine, signed by the founder in 1207 in 
the presence of a canon of Rouen, an abbot of the vicinity, 
and of many other witnesses. 

But one must conclude that this first gift was not consid- 
ered sufficient, for two years afterward Hugh of Chaumont 
did a second act of charity. Besides the house and garden of 
Gomerfontaine, he gave it two neighboring gardens, a wood, 
the right of fishing one day a year, twenty sous of rent from 
his income from Chauinont, a vineyard, and the tithe from 
a specified locality. Then, from the family of Chaumont or 
from other families of the vicinity, came additional alms : in 
1210, the gifts of two peasants and two innkeepers; in 1212, 
twenty-two perches of land; in 1213, an estate and ten 
Parisian sous in rent; in 1218, the tithe of a forest; in 1219, 
three perches of land; in 1220, a rent of two measures of 
wheat; in 1223, a house at Gomerfontaine. We witness 
thus the steps in the formation of an abbey's domains. Do- 
nations continued to accumulate during the whole thirteenth 
century, but they did not consist solely of estates, forests, 
and revenues in grain or in money. In 1252, a countess of 
Boulogne made a gift to the nuns of Gomerfontaine of five 



MONASTIC LIFE 215 

hundred herring, for their fish-days. These, then, are the 
reasons and conditions under which abbeys were founded dur- 
ing the time of Philip Augustus, In this instance it concerns 
a little community of nuns, a humble dependency of a pow- 
erful abbey of Citeaux, the domain and authority of which 
extend only a very short distance round about its buildings 
and the abbey church. But, whether the religious establish- 
ment was large or small, the sentiments animating the 
founders and the benefactors, and the processes employed in 
founding the monastery and increasing its domain, were 
exactly the same. 

Not only did the faithful found new houses, but they con- 
tinued to enrich those which were already in existence; 
though, it is true, with less zeal than before. From 1164 
to 1201, Clairvaux, the abbey of Saint Bernard, received nine 
hundred and sixty-four donations, being an average of a 
little more than twenty-five per year. From 1201 to 1242, 
the number began to decrease: it was five hundred and 
twenty-two, which still gave an average of thirteen. At 
Vauluisant, one of the ancient abbeys of the order of Citeaux, 
founded in 1127, out of the one hundred and fourteen char- 
ters comprised in the cartulary for the years 1180 and 1213, 
there are sixty which mention gifts made to the monks ; which 
proves that the Christian fervor, if it had diminished in 
intensity, was not extinct. In it we also see the domain of 
the monks Mncreasing and their treasure growing year by 
year. They received all kinds of properties and revenues: 
lands, woods, meadows, vineyards, incomes, or rents in money ; 
rents in kind of wine, wheat, barley, oats, flocks, even of iron 
and coal ; rights to pasture ; mills and coal mines and judicial 
rights. In brief, the monks were enriched and were pro- 
vided with every necessity of life. 

What motives animated the donors? They were always 
the same. Here is a woman who enriched Vauluisant " for 
the salvation of her soul, for that of her husband, of her 
children, and of her ancestors." Some made donations " for 
the expiation of their sins ' ' ; others because they were leaving 
for the crusade. In 1216, a noble, " on the point of setting 
out against the Albigenses, ' ' following the counsel of his 
friends, made his will before the priest who had the cure of 



216 SOCIAL FRANCE 

his soul ; and the priest made him give the abbey six pieces of 
land and three setiers of wheat from the revenue of a certain 
locality. It must be added that many of the donations were 
only to become effective posthumously : they were to be valid 
" after the death of the donor," valid post mortem. But 
the monk was patient, he knew how to wait, and some day 
or other he would come into possession. 

There is a proverb: Who has land has trouble. During 
the reign of Philip Augustus, the abbey of Vauluisant had 
to undergo not less than forty lawsuits: lawsuits against 
neighboring religious establishments, against rival churches, 
and lawsuits against individuals, especially those who had 
had the sorrow of discovering the bequest of a parent and 
had refused to give up the heritage. 

One of these contests of the date of 1209 is especially curi- 
ous. The abbey of Vauluisant had been attacked in the courts 
of justice by the abbey of Paraclet. The two communities 
were in strife over the estate of a priest named Girard. This 
priest had been the almoner of the abbess and nuns of 
Paraclet, but he had been buried in the cemetery of Vau- 
luisant. There was no reason for the monks considering 
themselves authorized to take all the objects belonging to 
the deceased, even to his clothes, an annotated psalter, and 
a sum of thirty sous in the coin of Provins. The abbess of 
Paraclet claimed them. The decision of the case was con- 
fided by superior authority to two arbitrators, and the monks 
of Vauluisant had to return what they had taken. Suits 
which they began against other religious communities did not 
always end in their favor, but, when monasteries had a case 
against ordinary individuals, they nearly always won their 
cause; often they did not even have to go into court. Men 
thought twice, in the middle ages, before pleading against 
an abbey: was it not pleading against the saint whose relics 
the convent possessed, and consequently against God Him- 
self? The Christian, anxious for the safety of his soul, 
nearly always chose to abandon his claim or, by means of a 
slight pecuniary sacrifice, the monks obtained his desistenee. 

There was one other source of wealth of the abbeys: it 
was the possession of the abbey churches. In 1185, Manasses, 
bishop of Troyes, enumerating in detail the parochial rev- 



MONASTIC LIFE 217 

enues which the abbey Montier-en-Der (Haute-Marne) pos- 
sessed in his bishopric, wrote to the monks: 

" You have at Rosnay the right to name the cure. Each Sunday 
the cure shall receive a denier from the offering, but the proceeds 
from the other public masses are yours. In the ceremonies for 
Vomen who come to be churched, that which is placed on the candle- 
sticks is for the cure and all the rest is yours. Three days of the 
week, on Monday, Thursday, and Saturday, if the cure says the mass 
for individuals, the money which is offered is his. He also receives 
the proceeds of the confession and the offering at marriages. But 
he has no right to the tithes, they are yours. Of the money accru- 
ing from alms, the cure shall receive twelve deniers. If the alms 
exceed twelve deniers the surplus shall be divided equally between 
the cure and you." 

The same details are given for each of the twenty other 
churches which the monks of Montier-en-Der possessed in 
the diocese of Troyes. Besides the proceeds from religious 
ceremonies, which they shared with the cure, they sometimes 
took the whole tithe, and sometimes the largest part of the 
tithe, which formed the most important parochial revenue. 
It was money easily earned, since the cure did all the work, 
and the abbey had only the trouble of collecting it. This 
lasted throughout the middle ages and the whole of the 
old regime. 

It would be interesting to know whether the monks to 
whom so many gifts and alms, in money and real estate, were 
made accepted them without disturbing themselves about 
their source, without inquiring to what extent the donor had 
rightfully or wrongfully acquired the properties which he 
was giving up. The truth is that this scruple did not worry 
the monks of that time very much, for the very simple reason 
that, at bottom, the great mass of the faithful was convinced 
that giving to a saint or to God was a pious deed, which in 
itself justified everything. It mattered little whether the 
source of the gift was pure or impure; from the moment 
that the church was enriched, even with possessions wrong- 
fully acquired, the sin was expiated and the wrong repaired. 

A letter which a certain Simon of Namur, in the first years 
of the thirteenth century, addressed to Henry of Villiers in 
response to an inquiry on that delicate subject, reveals the 



218 SOCIAL FKANCE 

sentiments and ethics of monks of that time. Simon com- 
mences, as usual, by referring to the authority of a church 
father, to Saint Jerome, who said: '' We must guard against 
receiving anything from the hand of those who have en- 
riched themselves by making the poor weep, for we should 
not be the associates of thieves, and it is imperative that no 
one may say of us, * When thou sawest a thief, thou con- 
sentedst with him ' (Si videhas furem, currehas cum eo)." 
Therefore, concludes Saint Simon, what shall one say of 
monks if they receive indiscriminately from all hands 1 There 
are four kinds of property which should not be given as alms : 
that which is acquired by simony, by usury, by robbery, or 
by depredation. Suppose that a usurer should wish to make 
a gift to a monastery. One should first warn him to return 
that which he has wrongly acquired. That is what Tobit said 
to Anna when some one brought him a kid: " From whence 
is this kid? Is it stolen? " But, if the usurer or robber 
responds, " I do not know whence it comes or to whom I 
should return it," what should be said? Simon of Namur 
does not hesitate : " In that case he ought to promise to give 
it to the church, and the monks, with the authorization of 
the bishop, may accept it." This applies to the case where 
the donor possessed only wrongfully acquired property. But 
it is possible that his possessions be of a mixed nature {mixta 
hona), that part of it was gained honestly and the rest dis- 
honestly. It is then that the subtilities of the casuistic 
scholars find their employment. In a case of mixed pos- 
session, says Simon, the monks may always accept: they go on 
the hypothesis that the thing given was honestly acquired, 
since it is impossible for them to show the contrary. 

Another recommendation made to the monks was not to 
buy an estate or any property when rumor says that the 
seller holds it improperly: for instance, when it is claimed 
by the heirs, or when it is known that they might claim it, with 
good grounds. And here the casuist continues to prove his 
ingenuity. Suppose, he says, that a usurer is in possession 
of an estate unjustly acquired by usury. May the monks 
buy it, granting that the usurer does not know to whom he 
should return it ? On this point there are two opinions. One 
holds that a monastery is permitted to receive the estate as 



MONASTIC LIFE 219 

alms, if the usurer consents to make a gift of it, but that it 
may not be bought of him. Why this distinction? It is 
because the usurer restores it to the church by the gift; it 
is not restored by the sale. The other claims that the monks 
can buy even in that case; but, adds Simon, " that does not 
seem permissible to me." Here his letter ends abruptly; 
unhappily, the end of the document is lacking. We would 
like to see how far the resources of this special casuistry go 
on a question so important and complex as that of the legal- 
ity of monastic acquisitions. 

When one studies the cartularies of the abbeys of that time, 
filled with deeds of donations and purchases, it seems very im- 
probable that the monks took the trouble to make inquiries 
about each of their acquisitions and heroically rejected gifts 
of a doubtful sort. One constantly sees them in suits against 
the heirs; they defend the case; they win or they compro- 
mise; and, finally, they nearly always remain in possession 
of the objects of litigation. However, in order to be charitable, 
it must be remarked that, in the epoch of Philip Augustus, 
the ecclesiastical authorities began to be stirred by certain 
scandals. A statute of the general chapter of the order 
of Citeaux, in 1183, forbade the monks to receive gifts com- 
ing from a person excommunicated by name. Another statute 
of the same chapter, in 1201, forbade the receiving of alms 
from the hands of those who practised their usury notori- 
ously. It remained a question to what extent these orders 
were heeded. 

The supreme generosity in the faithful of that time con- 
sisted of giving oneself to a monastery, or in giving a member 
of the family with a part or all of the inheritance. Gifts of 
that kind, very frequent in the primitive age of feudalism, 
and until the tenth and eleventh centuries, were becoming 
very much less common in the epoch of Philip Augustus. 
Faith was no more so simple. Men less readily than for- 
merly consented to bestow their property and personal inde- 
pendence upon the church or upon the saint who was its 
patron. They continued to do it, because they still found 
it to their religious or material advantage. Some agreed to 
be monks and to live the spiritual life, that they might be 
assured eternal happiness; others gave themselves to an 



220 SOCIAL FRANCE 

abbey, though remaining laymen, in order to enjoy the rela- 
tive security attached to possessions of the church and to 
have their living and shelter assured under the immediate 
protection of the monks. 

Thus it is that, in the first years of the thirteenth century, 
one sees an entire family — composed of a father, his daugh- 
ter, and grandmother — make a gift to the abbey of Saint- 
Vincent of Mans of their own persons and of a third of their 
patrimony. The other two-thirds they sold to the same reli- 
gious establishment for the sum of twenty-two livres in the 
money of Mans. But this was not a gift made purely and 
simply out of good will. The family which gave itself, in 
return, required of the abbey: first, an annual rental and 
annuity of twenty sous; second, a rental in kind of fifteen 
setiers of grain, consisting of seven of rye and eight of 
barley ; third, the possession of an arpent of vineyard in good 
condition, of an estate, and of a woodland solely for their 
personal use. At the death of the father, the monks were 
to pay one-half of the rental of twenty sous and resume half 
of the vineyard, the estate, and the woods. At the death 
of the daughter and of the grandmother, they were to reac- 
quire the other two quarters and pay nothing more. In fact, 
the donors were sellers. They contracted a sort of insurance 
against war and famine. They placed themselves and their 
goods at interest. It was a financial deal, advantageous both 
to individuals whom the insecurity of society prevented from 
living independently and to the religious community which, 
in the final reckoning, found itself possessed of one more 
domain in perpetuity. 

More often it happened that, when a man or woman gave 
himself to a monastery, it was in order to assume the monas- 
tic habit and to practise the religious life. This was expected 
when the head of a family gave the monks a son, a daughter, 
or a brother, thus singularly simplifying the family duty. On 
this point documents abound. Here is a noble, Hugh of 
Thiebaumenil, who gives the abbey of Haute-Seille his son 
Ulrich. But every monk had to bring his dowry with him; 
one could not enter the cloister empty-handed: Hugh ceded 
a part of his freehold of Laschere. Some time after he be- 
came a monk himself and transferred another part of his 



MONASTIC LIFE 221 

freehold. Finally, after some years, his wife in her turn 
embraced the religious life and gave the church what re- 
mained of their common patrimony. There was a whole 
family cloistered and an estate forever lost to civil society. 
This happened in the first years of the reign of Philip Augus- 
tus. In 1194, at the other end of France, a lesser noble of 
the region of the Pyrenees, Raymond Bernard of Esparros, 
gave the abbey of Escale-Dieu his son Bernard, ' ' in order that 
he may serve there as a monk, ' ' says the deed, and with him all 
that he possessed in the church of MazeroUes. The same thing 
happened in all other parts of the country. In 1193, a pro- 
prietor of Vexin gave the monks of Meulan two vineyards 
and two arpents of land, in order that his younger brother 
might enter the abbey. The donor himself appeared in the 
church of the abbey with the child. He placed a candlestick, 
which is the symbol of a gift, on the altar of Saint Nicaise. 
The prior of the community, with the consent of his brethren, 
conferred " fraternity " on the donor: that is, association in 
the spiritual benefits of the monks. He, in return, promised 
the monks that in his old age or even before, if he should 
so desire, he would enter their house " with his property." 

We do not know whether the promise was kept in this 
particular case, but there is no doubt that, up to the epoch 
of Philip Augustus, many individuals, when they felt them- 
selves attacked by some serious disease and felt their end 
approaching, took the habit, became monks, and at the same 
time enriched an abbey. It was the surest way for a human 
conscience to settle its accounts with God. 

The burden of a large family in an epoch when the fam- 
ilies of France counted a large number of children; the 
difficulty of giving land to sons and daughters in a way 
which would permit them to maintain an honorable rank; 
the pressure of sentiment, which urged into the cloister be- 
lievers eager for peace and mortifications and repentant sin- 
ners or the faithful trembling before death and the prospect of 
a hell in which all the world believed — these should suffice to 
explain how the innumerable monasteries and priories of 
the France of Philip Augustus so easily recruited their per- 
sonnel. But another motive must be taken into account: 
namely, the pressure to escape the struggle for life in a time 



222 SOCIAL FRANCE 

when there was security neither for property nor for indi- 
viduals and when the nobles themselves were not always sure 
of their next day's bread. There is a very curious page 
on this subject in the Dialogues of the Cistercian monk, Caesar 
of Heisterbach, who wrote in 1221. The author presents a 
dialogue between a monk and a novice. 

^' The Monk : We often see, every day we see rich and dis- 
tinguished persons, knights, for example, and citizens, come into 
our order for the purpose of escaping misery, preferring rather to 
serve by necessity a rich God, than to bear the shame of poverty 
in the midst of their kinsmen and acquaintances. A man who had 
occupied an honorable position in the world told me how he had 
come to enter a monastery : ' Certainly,' he added, ' if I had suc- 
ceeded in my affairs I should never have entered into the order.' 
I have known some who did not wish to follow their fathers and 
brothers when these entered the monastery. They wasted the prop- 
erty which had been left them, and it was then only that they came 
and with the mantle of devotion covered the misery which brought 
them. 

" Novice : It is not necessary to give many examples, for we see 
many men, especially lay brothers, enter the order for the same 
reason. But blessed be they who have had riches and have despised 
them for the love of Jesus Christ." 

Finally, one must add to this diverse category of voluntary 
and involuntary monks all the disinherited of the world, 
whom infirmities or defective physique did not permit to 
lead a normal life. When a father had crippled children 
he made them clerics or monks, so that the church was 
obliged to take steps to avoid becoming merely a vast asso- 
ciation of defectives. She required of her priests, canons, 
and especially of her bishops certain qualifications in the way 
of health and esthetic appearance, and opposed the admission 
of persons who had weak constitutions or were subject to 
ridicule into the sacerdotal body. In a time when bodily 
strength was so honored and physical beauty so appreciated 
among the nobles, it was important that the ministers of 
God should not have a grotesque or repulsive appearance. 
On principle, then, rules were established on this point, which 
were, however, often violated: it could not be otherwise. The 
church was always less particular about the monks, because 
in theory they would have but little contact with the world, 



MONASTIC LIFE 223 

and because infirmities hidden in the depth of the cloister were 
not likely to arouse laughter or scandal. The monasteries 
were also the natural refuge of a number of men who, for 
physical reasons, were not able to lead the hardy existence of 
a knight and of a number of non-marriageable women. It 
was a necessity which certain abbots found hard to accept. 
One of them, Peter Mirmet, a contemporary of Philip Augus- 
tus, became abbot in 1161 and was charged with the man- 
agement of the abbey of Andres, near Boulogne-sur-Mer. 
*' On entering the monastery," says a chronicler of the time, 
' ' he drew back in horror before the deformity . of the band 
which he was called to lead. Some monks were lame, others 
were one-eyed or cross-eyed or blind, and others one-armed." 
A reaction was necessary. During the thirty-two years in 
which he was abbot, Peter Mirmet refused admittance into 
his monastery to all persons having any bodily defect. That 
was, perhaps, going to the other extreme. 



Thanks to the liberality of the faithful for gifts of land 
and money, the monks were rich ; and the first use they made 
of those riches was to make their house worthy of the saint 
whose relics they possessed and who had brought them so 
many alms. This meant the enrichment of the sanctuary with 
precious objects and the erection of beautiful edifices in the 
style of the day. It is thus, at least, that one finds things in 
the ancient Benedictine congregations, notably in the vast 
monastic empire of Cluny. 

The principles of the Cistercians were different. Saint 
Bernard, the founder of Clairvaux, with extreme rigor ban- 
ished everything from the churches of his order which ap- 
pealed to the eyes or the senses, everything which could dis- 
tract the monk from contemplation and prayer: no orna- 
mented pavements, no mosaics, no stained-glass windows. 
Only the cross was allowed, and that was not to be large, 
gilded, or silver-plated. Ornaments of silk were prohibited, 
even in the great ceremonies. On the outside there was the 
same simplicity. Towers of stone were forbidden. They 
had to be built of wood and be of limited proportions. Small 
bells only were allowed, etc. We recall the celebrated decla- 



224 SOCIAL FKANCE 

ration of Saint Bernard, where he condemned the zeal of 
the Cluniacs, in adorning their churches and in consecrating 
art to the service of God and the saints. 

" The church is resplendent with its high walls, and lacks every- 
thing for its poor. She gilds her stones, and leaves her children 
naked. With the money of the wretched the gaze of the rich is 
charmed. Of what good are the symbohc pictures, colored and 
sculptured objects? All this stifles devotion and recalls Jewish 
ceremonies. Works of art are idols which lead away from God, and 
are good at most to excite the piety of feeble souls and of the 
worldly." 

One could speak thus in the twelfth century, when there 
was a fervor of religious reform and a rivalry between the 
orders for mortifications and asceticism. But, in the time 
of Philip Augustus, the fashion of beautiful structures and 
of luxury in the ceremonies of the cult was so far developed 
that the Cistercians themselves began to yield to the con- 
tagion. In 1192, the chapter-general of Citeaux was obliged 
to recall the abbots to the observation of the rule and to pro- 
hibit the construction of oversumptuous churches. In 1182, 
it had ordered the destruction, within two years, of all the 
stained-glass windows erected in violation of the precepts 
of the founder. In 1213, it became necessary to prohibit 
all pictures other than those of Christ. A statute, in 1183, 
forbade the abbots and monks to wear chasubles of silk. But, 
in spite of all prohibitions, the rule gradually ceased to be 
observed, even among the Cistercians, and the Cluniac con- 
ception, that nothing was too beautiful or too rich for the 
service of God, finally prevailed. 

The good abbot, the model abbot, the one whom the chron- 
iclers mention with praise, and of whom they speak most, 
is he who devoted the most time, effort, and money to increas- 
ing the properties of the abbey and repairing or construct- 
ing its buildings. For the most part, the heads of abbeys 
had at that time a passion for building, and it is as adept 
builders that they are presented to posterity. Open, for 
example, the Histoire de Saint-Florent de Saumur. Here 
is a funeral eulogy of the sixteenth abbot, Mainier, who died 
in 1203. Some few lines are devoted to his moral qualities, 
and then come the essentials. 



MONASTIC LIFE 225 

" He acquired very much property. He built many edifices, the 
entry to the church, the refectory, the hospital, and the reception 
room. It was he who began carefully and finished manfully 
(viriliter) the high wall which encloses our vineyard. May the Son 
of the Most High absolve this venerable abbot." 

But the successor of this Mainier, the seventeenth abbot, 
Michel of Saumur, was a still more remarkable man. 

" In temporal things God gave him such grace that there was 
not his equal as a constructor of buildings. It is to him that we 
owe our new grand hall, the greater part of our houses, and the 
mills which he built against the will of all the inhabitants of Saumur. 
It was he who enriched our church with mantles, stoles, copes, 
dalmatics, and tunics of silk, to the value of five hundred livres. 
At the end of his life he built the abbatial chamber, a masterpiece 
of elegance, with its beautiful bay-windows. Fiually it was he who 
obtained the magnificent bells of the tower from Chartres at gTeat 
expense." 

All the eulogies resemble each other, because the tendencies 
were everywhere the same, and because the abbots generally 
took especial care of the material interests of their commu- 
nity. Eead, for example, the passage from the chronicle of 
Saint-Martial of Limoges, which relates to a monk, a contem- 
porary of Philip Augustus, the twentieth abbot, Isembert. 

" He was a very gentle and peaceful man, who knew how to 
please the powerful. In his youth he governed first of all the priory 
of Ruffee. There he built the church, cloister, the houses, all the 
workshops, and the entire wall from its foundations. It was he 
also who furnished the priory and built the altar, and the gilded 
shrine of Saint Alpinien. Finally he increased the revenue in such 
a way that seven monks could live there, where before two had had 
trouble to find their maintenance. At Saint-Martial, itself, he re- 
built the infirmary with such magnificence that one would have 
said it was the palace of the king. Thanks to his acquisitions the 
provostship of Verneuil annually brings us four hundred sous. 
From that sum he set apart ten livres to increase the fund intended 
for clothing the monks. He built a mill at Aigueperse, and he 
assigned sixty sous for an additional meal to be given the brothers 
on the Monday which follows the second Sunday after Easter. 
The chapel of the cemetery was built and dedicated through his 
efforts, and it was he finally who built the cellar near the chapel 
of the Virgin. Thanks to the revenues with which he enriched the 
abbey two hundred poor received a meal at the almonry, three hun- 
dred at the bakery, and the brothers at the refectory." 



226 SOCIAL FRANCE 

To manage to obtain money and to spend freely for the 
service of God, for the poor, and for the convenience of the 
monks, was to the abbot of the middle ages the surest way of 
living in the memory of men and of insuring his salvation. 
The most important event in the administration of an abbot, 
and one which formed an epoch in the annals of the mon- 
astery, was the construction of a church. The abbatial church 
is the large shrine which covers the small one containing the 
relics of the patron of the abbey. The higher and loftier 
it is and the more the saint is honored, the greater is the 
veneration which the sanctuary excites; and, consequently, 
the greater the offerings and money of pilgrims. The monks 
had an interest in having their church of the greatest 
grandeur. The money devoted to a building was well in- 
vested, temporally as well as spiritually. This explains why 
the contemporaries of Phil:p Augustus saw the churches of 
abbeys arising in all parts of France, as sumptuous as the 
cathedrals. 

To the south of the Loire, the Roman style produced two 
beautiful abbatial churches — Saint-Julien of Brioude and 
Sainte-Croix of Bordeaux; but those in the north — ^the abbey 
of Val, the church of Longpont (Aisne), the choir of Montier- 
en-Der, the church of Saint-Yved of Braisne, that of Saint- 
Pierre-le-Vif of Sens, the abbey of Ourscamp, the church of 
the abbey of Saint-Mathieu-du-Finistere, and the " Mer- 
veille " of Mont Saint-Michel — are mostly in the gothic 
style. 

The last structure, the work of four abbots, — Robert of 
Torigny, Jourdain, Raoul of Isles, and Thomas of Chambres, 
contemporaries of Philip Augustus and Louis YIII, — is a 
masterpiece of monastic art. It is composed of two separate 
buildings, of many stories. On the west is the cellar (1204- 
1212), which is surmounted by the splendid chapter-room, 
called " Chevaliers " (1215-1220), with its four naves, its 
pointed arches, and sculptured keystones, its columns fin- 
ished with rich capitals, and its two fireplaces with mantels 
in the form of pyramids ; and above, the cloister, finished at 
the end of the reign of Saint Louis, one of the jewels of 
gothic art, where everything is made to charm: the elegance 
of the arch-work, and of the small columns, which run in 



MONASTIC LIFE 227 

two rows, and the infinitely varied ricliness of the sculpture 
which runs throughout the length of the gaUery. To the 
east lie the almonry (1204-1212), and the refectory (finished 
in 1218), so imposing with its double nave, with its two 
large windows, and its high arches resting on slender, soberly 
decorated columns. This group of buildings is placed on the 
summit of an inaccessible rock, resting on a wall of singular 
roughness, sixty-six meters long and from forty to fifty high. 
This abbey is a fortress, which testifies to the ruggedness of 
the monk and the turbulence of the time. 

It is the same with the church of the Black Monks of 
Saint- Victor of Marseilles, rebuilt in 1200. With its two 
towers resembling keeps, its porch and walls built of enor- 
mous uncemented blocks of Pelasgian appearance, its four 
thick buttresses supporting the polygonal apse, and its few 
high windows, it was made to sustain sieges. The history 
of the monks of Saint- Victor is, in fact, filled with wars and 
combats, with the suzerains of the city and with the counts 
and lords of the region. 



Similar cases were not at all rare in that epoch. In all 
provinces where there was no powerful and commanding 
baron capable of acting as police, anarchy was permanent, 
and the monk, like all others, was attacked and obliged to 
defend himself, if he did not wish to be ruined. 

The chronicler, Geoffrey, prior of Vigeois, a dependency 
of Saint-Martial of Limoges, relates the events of which he 
was eyewitness during a single year and a half, in 1182 and 
1183. Here are the depredations and exactions which the 
monasteries of Limousin had to suffer during that very short 
period. "We may believe him: he does not exaggerate, is not 
even particularly indignant ; it seems that he was accustomed 
to these scenes of war and disorder. In November, 1182, 
the cloister of the priory of Chalais was destroyed by a rela- 
tive of the viscount of Castillon. The monks were scattered, 
and the soldiers seized the relics of Saint Ancilde and carried 
them to the castle of their captain, in order to protect it. In 
February, 1183, the citizens of Limoges took advantage of 
the war between Henry II, king of England, and his eldest 



228 SOCIAL FEANCE 

son, Henry the Young, to satisfy their grudges against the 
monks of Saint-Martial. They devastated the magnificent 
gardens of the abbey, demolished five or six small churches 
which belonged to it, burnt the belfries of Saint-Martin-les- 
Limoges, another of their dependencies ; destroyed the belfry, 
walls, workshops, and the church itself. A few days later, 
a band of mercenaries seized two monks of the abbey of 
Pierre-Buffiere and dragged them along, half-naked, till they 
bought themselves off. An adventurer in the pay of the Eng- 
lish, says the chronicler, made a specialty of seizing monks 
and of offering them for sale at eighteen sous apiece. In 
March, 1183, the son of the king of England, Henry the 
Young, invaded the abbey of Saint-Martial and drove out 
all the monks, even the novices and the school children. Such 
dignitaries as the dean, the precentor, the subcantor, and the 
provost of the abbey had to pass the night out of doors. 
' ' Who would believe it, ' ' adds Geoffrey of Vigeois, ' ' if these 
facts had not had a number of witnesses? " The following 
day, Henry the Young compelled them to surrender all the 
treasure of the sanctuary, the altars, the golden statues, the 
chalices, the cross, and the shrines. It was only a loan: he 
gave them a receipt sealed with his seal. But all these riches 
were put on sale or given as security to pay his soldiers, 
and were seen no more. In May, the same prince carried 
away the treasury of Grandmont and that of the abbey 
Couronne; he stripped also the monasteries of Dalon and of 
Obazine. In October, 1183, the priory of Vigeois was men- 
aced by a band of soldiers, and the monks carried away the 
most precious objects, in order to store them in a safe spot. 
A few days later another priory of Saint-Martial, Saint- 
Pardoux of Arnet, was ransomed in its turn ; the monks were 
obliged to buy back their property for six hundred and fifty 
SOUS; the men of the priory were taken captive and were 
held until the prior had paid the sum required for their 
ransom. At Saint-Geraud of Aurillae, the chief of the band 
taxed the monastery fifteen thousand sous. "We may stop 
here. The enumeration is sufficiently instructive, for it cov- 
ers a period of only twelve months, and we can conclude that, 
at that time, it was not good to live in the monasteries of 
central France. 



MONASTIC LIFE 229 

We may assume that the same things happened in all the 
regions which were the scene of a war between kings or 
barons; and war often broke out, to the misfortune of the 
peasants and monks, who were its principal victims. The 
monasteries irresistibly attracted the soldiers, because of their 
riches. The religious devotion of the time did not prevent 
their being pillaged or even burned: a sacrilege, no doubt, 
but one which could easily be atoned for by a gift or a pil- 
grimage. This is a matter on which we could speak at length : 
we shall return to it later. Let us note for the moment sim- 
ply that, in feudal atmosphere with its incessant wars, abbeys, 
though fortified, were not a very safe shelter, and that it was 
necessary to struggle for life and property there as else- 
where. 

But many other reasons prevented monastic life, composed 
of prayer and labor, from being carried on peacefully and 
regularly as it ought. The hastiest glance over the documents 
is enough to reveal the principal disorders from which the 
regular clergy then suffered in all parts of France and in 
all congregations. In temporal affairs the communities of 
monks and nuns were badly managed, and they got into debt, 
until almost completely ruined. Internal divisions disturbed 
them and weakened them considerably. Finally, the rule was 
no longer observed: scandals of every sort occurred, and the 
ecclesiastical authorities found themselves obliged to inter- 
vene constantly in order to subject the monks to the obliga- 
tions of their positions; to impose reforms on them, with or 
against their will. In the material, as well as in the moral, 
conditions of monasteries signs of decadence were not lack- 
ing, and precisely this decadence of the orders of the ancient 
Benedictine system is one of the characteristics of the history 
of the French church and of France during the epoch of 
Philip Augustus. 

To communities as well as to individuals the financial 
question, the question of the budget, has at all times been a 
vital question. The history of the middle ages furnishes 
plenty proof of this. In the thirteenth century, to give only 
two examples, the disappearance of the French communes, 
those strong republics of northern France, was due in large 
part to the bad financial organization, to their inability to 



230 SOCIAL FRANCE 

provide for their expenses, or to meet their liabilities. Many 
of them ended in bankruptcy, by which the royal power bene- 
fited. The question of money dominated all the internal and 
external policy of the monarchy during the reign of Philip 
the Fair and of his first successor, after having held a place 
in the affairs of Philip Augustus not sufficiently noted by 
historians. But it was not only the kings and common people 
who suffered from the evil of money : we see, when we study 
the feudal laity, that many of the noble families were ter- 
ribly indebted, ruined by usurers, were obliged to mortgage 
or sell a patrimony, which thus went to pieces, in order to 
fulfil their obligations and keep their rank. The church itself 
did not escape the general calamity, and the monasteries es- 
pecially suffered from it. The German monk, Csesar of 
Heisterbach, relates a curious anecdote on this subject in his 
Dialogues, written in 1221 : 

" One day a usurer deposited a sum of money in trust with the 
cellarer of our order. He put it in a safe place with the money 
of the monastery. Later the usurer demanded his deposit. The 
cellarer opened the coffer and found there neither the money of 
the usurer nor the money of the monastery. The locks were intact, 
the seals of the sacks had not been broken; there was no reason 
to suspect a theft. It was clear that the money of the usurer had 
devoured that of the monastery." 

The allegory is clear, and is amply justified by the facts. 
Thus, in 1196, the abbey of Saint-Benigne of Dijon borrowed 
the sum of seventeen hundred livres from a Jew named Valin 
at the rate of sixty-five per cent. The abbey went eleven 
years without being able to pay anything, so that, at the end 
of the eleven years, the debt of seventeen hundred livres had 
increased to nine thousand eight hundred and twenty-five 
livres. In 1207, Blanche, countess of Champagne, was 
obliged to take over the debt of the monks of Saint-Benigne, 
and, in 1222, Alix, duchess of Burgundy, had to reimburse 
a Jew named Salamine, who was also a creditor of the abbey 
of Saint-Benigne and of the abbey of Saint-Seine, In order 
to indemnify its creditors and bondsmen, its moneylenders, 
Saint-Benigne was compelled to sell considerable property 
which it possessed in Burgundy. Similarly, in 1220, we see 



MONASTIC LIFE 231 

the abbey of Saint-Loup of Troyes admitting that it owed 
four hundred and fifty livres of Provins to a Jew of Dam- 
pierre; it gave as security the whole village of Molins in 
Aube, on which it had already granted him a life annuity. 
At Verdun, shortly after the year 1197, the abbey of Saint- 
Vanne found itself loaded with debt, and a chronicler relates 
the following story on the subject. The monastery had an 
abbot to elect; on the demand of Agnes, countess of Bar, a 
monk of Cluny, named Stephen, was chosen to direct Saint- 
Vanne. One day, when the new abbot found himself in the 
presence of the countess, she demanded of him how he in- 
tended to root out the inextricable thicket of thorns, which 
was the cause of the abbey's bad financial condition, and in 
which it had been entangled for a long time. ' ' Our debts ? ' ' 
replied the abbot; '* they will be paid with the red tunic of 
Saint- Vanne ; I have full confidence in it. ' ' He meant to say 
that the abbey would pay the debt with the relics of the 
saint to whom it was dedicated. This was, in fact, one of 
the means which indebted monasteries employed to free them- 
selves. The chronicler was indignant at what he considered 
a cynical response of the abbot, and added: 

" Such irreverence was punished on the spot. There before the 
eyes of the ladies and the barons who were present the abbot sud- 
denly fell, touched by a stroke of paralysis. He began to foam 
at the mouth and to tear himself with his nails, and he never 
recovered the use of his speech from that day. At sight of these 
things the countess gave the order for him to be lifted and carried 
away to a couch." 

Here was a chronicler who took such matters seriously. 
There were other regions of France where they were not 
shocked to see the monks coin money from the relics of their 
patron saint. 

Let us, in imagination, betake ourselves to Saint-Martial 
of Limoges. Here, also, the monastery and priories sank un- 
der the weight of their debt. In 1213, the sacristan owed a 
thousand sous, and the abbey twenty thousand more. In 
1214, the debts of Saint-Martial increased to more than forty 
thousand sous. " In such a situation," says the chronicler 
Bernard Itier, " the church is truly in danger." In 1216, 



232 SOCIAL FRANCE 

the abbot personally owed twenty thousand sous. " For 
twenty years," adds the chronicler, " the usurers have ex- 
torted incalculable sums from our abbots, and they boast of 
continuing it." In 1220, the abbey was so loaded with debt 
and so impoverished that the abbot, Raimond Gaucelin, was 
on the point of resigning. Fortunately, however, the report 
of miracles performed on the grave of Saint Martial com- 
menced to spread, and money flowed into the monastery to 
such an amount that the abbot was able to rid the monks of 
a large share of their creditors. Here the miracle occurred 
very opportunely, indeed. 

At the other end of France, in Provence, the abbey of 
Saint- Victor of Marseilles, in 1185, found itself in an even 
more critical condition. It owed eighty thousand sous to 
the Jews of Marseilles, and was compelled to give them a cer- 
tain amount of its property, which comprised villages and 
churches. Churches to the Jews! The bishop of Antibes, 
in order to avoid this scandal, felt compelled to buy off the 
creditors himself, giving them half of the sum in cash; and, 
in a cartulary of Saint- Victor, we have the charter by which 
the abbot surrendered to him a castle and all the revenues 
of the sacristy as a compensation for his expenditures. 

The scene is everywhere the same. In the Cluniac priory 
of Charite-sur-Loire, in 1209, the prior Geoffrey, crushed with 
debt and interest, was obliged to sell the important seigniory 
of Laigneville, near Senlis, to the Templars for ten thou- 
sand livres of Tours. In 1200, Raoul, abbot of Saint-Germain 
of Auxerre, was compelled to sell the gold and jewels which 
decorated the shrine of Saint-Germain. The saints them- 
selves were plundered by those who had charge of serving 
them, and there was not a year when monks did not give 
the gold and silver paraments of the altar — chalices, crosses, 
and even sacerdotal vestments — as security to usurers, who 
were then nearly always Jews. Knowing the sentiments of 
the middle ages in regard to the Jews, one can comprehend 
the enormity of the scandal without considering that the ac- 
cumulated debts often led to actual bankruptcy of the mon- 
asteries. The monks finally scattered, and the abbey, de- 
prived of a means of existence since it had lost everything, 
disappeared. It cannot be doubted that a large number of 



MONASTIC LIFE 233 

monastic establishments, which are not found later than the 
end of the middle ages, ceased to exist for this reason, suc- 
cumbing under financial embarrassment. 

In the Cistercian order, the founders took the greatest 
precautions to avoid such catastrophes. It appears, however, 
that their successors did not succeed any better in preventing 
the Cistercian abbeys from getting into debt than in making 
them observe the rules, which forbade the acquisition of real 
estate, for, at the end of the twelfth century, the chapter- 
general of Citeaux almost every year uttered a cry of alarm. 
In 1181, it said in its seventh statute, *' It is truly a matter 
for shame that one sees certain of our brothers running their 
house into debt in order to buy wine." And, in 1182: " The 
debts increase in enormous proportions. They threaten the 
ruin of many of our communities. Every house which has 
more than fifty marks of debt is prohibited from buying any 
land or constructing any new buildings." The statute of 
1184 permits abbots to sell movable property and even real 
estate in cases of absolute necessity, where the debts are over- 
whelming and must be paid. In 1188 there was a new pro- 
hibition against buying land and against building. But 
the prohibitions remained ineffectual, and two years after 
the death of Philip Augustus the abbey of Citeaux itself, 
the head of the order, which should have been an example, 
was in such a desperate situation that the whole congrega- 
tion was obliged to come to its aid and to vote it a subsidy. 

How did the monks use their money? Without doubt, 
their greatest expenditures were in the purchases of land, 
and especially of buildings. But it must be noted that they 
had other heavy expenses. They were first of all obliged to 
give many alms and shelter travelers, pilgrims, and beggars. 
One of their strictest duties was to feed the poor, clothe them, 
and even give them temporary shelter. In every notable 
abbey there were two important offices: that of the almonry 
and the hostelry; and two special dignitaries had charge of 
the offices. In the Cistercian order the almoner was called 
the " porter " (portarius). He must always have in his cell, 
situated near the entrance to the monastery, loaves of bread 
ready to be given to the passersby who might need them. 
Caesar of Heisterbach states that, in 1217, fifteen thousand 



234 SOCIAL FRANCE 

poor received alms at the gate of his abbey in one day. 
Every day on which meat might be eaten, until harvest time, 
a beef was killed and cooked with vegetables, and the whole 
distributed to the poor. On fish-days the meat was left out 
and only vegetables were given. The alms of bread were so 
large that the abbot feared his granaries would be emptied 
before the harvest and suggested to the baker that he make 
the loaves smaller. " But," said the baker to him, " I put 
them into the oven small and they come out large." It was 
a permanent miracle, and Ceesar adds, " The grain was seen 
to increase in the sacks." 

Another very burdensome obligation devolved upon all 
monks, whether vassals of the king or of the lord of the 
province, or subordinates of the prelates and of the pope: 
to meet the pressing needs of the church or simply to fill the 
voids in the royal treasury, monks had to pay taxes, under 
the pretext of aiding a crusade ; and these were rigorously 
collected. We recall what certain monks, like Bernard Itier 
and Guyot of Provins, said of the rapacity of the Romans, 
that is, of the papacy, its cardinals, and its agents. This 
abuse, the Roman exaction, had, by the end of the twelfth 
century, taken on such proportions that the chapter-general 
of Citeaux could not refrain from complaining publicly and 
from taking measures to have it cease. In the statutes of 
the year 1193, the seventh article ends thus: " It is necessary 
to write to the pope to inform him that Gregory, cardinal of 
the title of Saint Angelo, exacts new taxes from the abbots 
of our order, of which there has been no instance up to this 
time." And the chapter-general punished the abbots who 
had given the legate money by a day of penance on bread 
and water. 

As regards the demands of the royal treasury, it is enough 
to see how Philip Augustus dealt with the abbey of Saint- 
Denis in 1186, as related by Rigord. William of Gap was 
then its abbot. That year the king called upon the monks 
of Saint-Denis to deposit with him a thousand marks in 
money. It was a very large sum, and the abbot was not able 
to comply, " One day," says Rigord, " the king, passing 
by Saint-Denis on the business of the realm, entered the 
abbey as though it were his own room. But the abbot, in- 



MONASTIC LIFE 235 

formed of the coming of the king, in great fright hastened to 
call his brothers into chapter-meeting, and tendered his resig- 
nation." These few lines tell volumes: he had to abdicate 
or pay. 

The abbot, then, was not always responsible for the bad 
financial condition of his community : he had constantly to 
struggle against more or less unjust and unreasonable de- 
mands from without, and often to struggle unsuccessfully. 
But when, to make things worse, the head of the monastery 
was a bad administrator, a negligent person, or- a prodigal, 
everything went from bad to worse, and complete ruin came 
at last. The greatest objection to the rule of Saint Benedict 
was that it gave the abbot an almost absolute temporal power 
over the monastery. He was entitled to passive obedience ; he 
had all the rights. He was the sovereign of the establishment : 
he was called doniinus. It is true that, to counterbalance this 
almost autocratic power, the rule required him to consult 
the assemblage of his brothers, the chapter. In theory he was 
bound to take their advice, but in fact he very often enjoyed 
an authority without limit and without control. He admin- 
istered the property of the community as he pleased, without 
rendering an account of his administration to delegates of 
the monks who were under him. When this sort of absolute 
monarchy fell into the hands of an honest and systematic 
man, affairs of the community could not suffer; they might 
even prosper. But when the abbot was feeble, without per- 
sonal worth, or disposed only to satisfy the passion of greedi- 
ness, the debts of the house increased and all was lost. That 
is why, in the councils of that epoch, urgent recommendations 
to abbots were always being adopted. What they were for- 
bidden to do, for example, in the canons of the council of 
Paris in 1243, reveals what they did. The following enu- 
meration speaks for itself: 

"1. The abbots shall not exercise the functions of advocates and 
judges. 

" 2. They shall not be followed by a large escort, and shall not 
have too many young domestics around them. 

" 3. They shall not give the goods of the monastery to their rela- 
tives. 

" 4. They shall not allow young women to enter the monastery. 



236 SOCIAL FRANCE 

" 5. They shall not take the priories from those in whom they are 
vested in order to transfer them to persons of their family. 

" 6. They shall, twice a year, receive the accounts of the officers 
of the abbey and of the priories. 

" 7. They shall not handle important affairs, and borrow large 
sums without the advice of the seven oldest monks, chosen by the 
chapter for that purpose." 

There is here a very clear attempt to limit the abbot's 
power over the temporal affairs and to substitute constitu- 
tional for absolute monarchy. 



" 8. They shall not sell the priories. 

" 9. Finally the abbots and priors are expressly forbidden to 
menace and maltreat monks who shall propose to the chapter 
measures teu'ding to reform the house." 



In 1216, at the council of Sens, it was necessary for eccle- 
siastical authority to direct abbots and priors to render an 
annual account to the chapter of the amount of their ex- 
penditures and of the state of the finances of the community. 
And the same council forbade them to borrow beyond a 
certain amount, especially of the Jews. These regulations 
were renewed nearly every year at all the meetings of the 
bishops which occurred during the thirteenth century, a 
proof that they were but little observed. When, in the time 
of Saint Louis, an archbishop of Rouen wrote a journal of 
his pastoral visit and pointed out the misdeeds committed 
in the religious establishments under his inspection, on each 
page of the journal appear the words non computat: this 
abbot does not render an account to his chapter. Often the 
abbots themselves did not know what the debts of their com- 
munity amounted to. It seems incredible, but these adminis- 
trators neither kept accounts nor drew up a budget. 

When the councils and bishops failed, the popes inter- 
vened and imposed reforms on the monasteries threatened 
with failure. That, for example, is what Pope Celestine III 
did in 1195 to save the abbey of Saint- Victor of Marseilles 
from ruin. The pontifical decree gave the abbot full author- 
ity to dismiss bad priors. He exacted a collective tax from 
all the priories of the abbey to aid the abbey itself and to 



MONASTIC LIFE 237 

diminish its debt. The pope also commanded the priors to 
pay the tax which each owed the abbot regularly at the 
usual times; for the system of subject-houses was one of the 
most frequent causes of the bad financial condition of the 
abbeys, inasmuch as the priors refused to contribute toward 
the expenses of the mother house or to make the annual pay- 
ment of a part of their receipts to the chief place. Strict 
injunctions were given the priors against parting with their 
real estate and against contracting debts larger than a hun- 
dred sous without the consent of the abbot. They were or- 
dered to come every year and give an accounting to the 
chapter-general. Cumulative expenses of the priories must 
be limited, and the abbot or grand-prior must not practise 
exactions on the priories. Finally, the abbot himself had 
not the right to borrow more than a thousand sous without 
the consent of his chapter; and, in general, he was forbid- 
den to transact any important business or the more serious 
matters of the monastery without having first taken the ad- 
vice of the chapter or of a majority of the chapter. By this 
decree of reform one can judge the others; they all resemble 
each other, and their number and frequent repetition prove 
that the evil was great and that it was very difficult to root 
out the abuse. Making new rules was relatively unimportant ; 
putting them into execution was decidedly more to the point. 
In spite of councils and of popes, the monastic world was 
too often exposed to real catastrophes. Abbeys, completely 
ruined, closed their doors and disappeared. In order to 
prevent such scandals, it was not rare to have the church 
punish abbots who were unruly or deceitful by suspending 
or even deposing them. In 1205, Robert, abbot of Couture, 
the great monastery of Mans, was dismissed for having wasted 
the revenues of his house in a scandalous manner. Two years 
before the pope had proceeded in the same way to depose 
Arnold, abbot of the monastery of Saint-Michel of Cuxa in 
Roussillon. He can be taken as the type of the bad abbot. 
Not content with neglecting the domains of his monastery 
and with allowing the conventual buildings to fall into ruins, 
he had given away, mortgaged, or sold the largest part of 
the lands and revenues of his community, so that the abbey 
had fallen into the last degree of misery. The lay sovereign 



238 SOCIAL FRANCE 

of Roussillon, Peter II of Aragon, had to intervene, and 
rendered a decision, by virtue of which the sales effected by 
the Abbot Arnold were declared null and void and redeem- 
able at a price which arbitrators chosen by himself should 
fix. The measure may appear somewhat despotic to us to- 
day, but in that time when the interests of the church and 
of its domain — that is, property of God and the saints, hence 
sacred and inalienable — were at stake, private agreements 
and the rights of individuals did not count. 

Let us, to conclude, cite a letter of Stephen of Tournai, 
written to the archbishop of Reims and relating to a mon- 
astery in insolvency, the monastery of Bredeene. It brings 
us to the heart of things, and the incident which it reveals 
to us, far from being isolated, then occurred frequently 
enough everywhere. The large abbeys were not permitted 
to die, but the small ones, not being helped, went to pieces 
themselves without creating comment: 

" We proceeded to the monastery of Bredeene, to hold our synod 
there. But what was our astonishment! and what a sad spectacle 
for the church, what a scandal for strangers! We had been told 
that the abbey consisted of twelve regularly established monks, that 
the offices were there celebrated punctually, that the poor were fed, 
the unfortunate comforted, and pilgrims harbored. We arrived, 
and what did we behold? Buildings in ruins, no sound of religious 
services, everywhere silence and desolation, not a monk to serve 
the holy place. We found ourselves facing a desert; one would 
call it a miserable hovel in a vineyard or a field of gourds. And 
yet, the abbey had possessed large estates with rich tithes; but 
nearly everything had been mortgaged or sold. That unfortunate 
church had no one to care for it except a solitary priest. The 
parishioners lamented and complained deeply. They stated that the 
church had been founded and enriched by the donations of their 
ancestors, and they persistently claimed what had disappeared." 

And what did the bishop do in this ease? He placed the 
interdict on that deplorable (lacrymahilem) church, forbade 
the celebration of divine offices there, and prohibited the 
parishioners from paying tithes or from making any offering 
whatever as long as the monks and the prior, to the last man, 
had not returned. We do not know the effect of this meas- 
ure, for the correspondence of Stephen does not say any- 
thing about it, but we may assume that the disaster was 



MONASTIC LIFE 239 

absolute and that the abbey of Bredeene only went to swell 
the list of ruined and dissolved monasteries. 



Another evil of the monastic world was discord. Diso- 
bedience, open rebellion, and internal struggles raged in the 
house of peace and prayer. 

In 1212, the abbot of Cluny commanded a member of his 
order, Geoffrey of Donzy, prior of La Charite, — who lived 
scandalously, — to come to the chapter-general. Geoffrey re- 
fused, and sent a monk to the abbot, who declared that his 
prior appealed to the pope. The abbot himself went to La 
Charite to compel the monks to return to their duty. 
Scarcely had he crossed the threshold of the priory with his 
suite when he was greeted by a shower of stones, hurled from 
the bell-tower. His horse was badly wounded and he him- 
self, half -killed, " trembling in all his members, and livid," 
says the letter of Innocent III which relates the incident, 
had ito seek refuge in the home of a citizen. Soldiers, hired 
by the prior, occupied all the high places of the buildings of 
the priory, organized a patrol, and closed the gates of the 
town. It became necessary to parley with the rebels. 

An interview took place at one of the gates between the 
representatives of the chapter-general and Geoffrey of Donzy, 
who appeared surrounded by monks carrying enormous 
cudgels. The prior declared that he had no concern about 
the chapter and its corrections. " He was responsible in 
spiritual matters to the pope alone, and in temporal matters 
to the count of Nevers, under whose care his priory was 
placed. He would not accept any proposal for peace or any 
agreement until the abbot should leave the town." The chap- 
ter excommunicated him with all his accomplices, removed 
him from his office, and put a monk of Cluny in his place. 
But to execute these measures required the help of Philip 
Augustus, who obliged the count of Nevers to force an en- 
trance into the priory. 

In the statutes of the chapter-general of Citeaux there 
often appear conspiracies formed by the monks against their 
abbot. The chapter, in 1183, compared the conspirators to 
thieves and incendiaries and declared them liable to excom- 



240 SOCIAL FRANCE 

munication. That of 1191 decided that the leaders shonld be 
expelled from the abbey and transferred to another estab- 
lishment of the order, where they should each week receive 
the discipline and should for a whole day be put on bread 
and water. The head of the congregation of Saint- Victor of 
Marseilles also had the greatest difficulty in retaining under 
his dominion the dependent abbeys or the priories which were 
always disposed to free themselves. The rebellions were so 
frequent that, in 1218, every monk charged with the admin- 
istration of a priory was obliged to take the following oath: 

"I swear by the Holy Gospels of God in your hands, Seignior 
Abbot, that from to-day henceforth I will be obedient to you and 
to your successors, the abbots of Saint- Victor, and that I will, with 
all faithfulness, fulfil the office which I receive from you. Any 
time that it shall please you, on the advice of the elders of the 
monastery, to relieve me of my post, I swear not to protest any- 
thing, and to place in your hands without protest or resistance, 
the priory with all that is dependent on it." 

Even tragedies were not lacking. In 1186, the abbot of 
Trois-Fontaines of the order of Citeaux was assassinated by 
a monk. In 1210, the canons of Salles, near Rochechouart, 
murdered their prior at the moment when he arose to sing 
matins. In the same year, the abbot of Fontgombault was 
poisoned. In 1216, a monk of the abbey of Deols was killed 
by one of his brothers. The history of the abbots of Saint- 
Vanne at Verdun, at the end of the twelfth century, is noth- 
ing more than a series of revolts and enforced abdications. 
That of the abbey of Senones, crushed with debt, is scarcely 
more edifying. At Tulle, in 1210, the monks were divided 
into two factions, each of which elected its abbot; the con- 
sequent conflict brought about the destruction of the mon- 
astery. Very nearly the same catastrophe happened at Saint- 
Martial of Limoges, where, in 1216, three abbots disputed 
over the crozier. 

What envenomed these conflicts was that the monks, in 
the struggles among themselves or in their revolts against 
the abbot, appealed to the support of outsiders. They ap- 
pealed from their abbot to higher ecclesiastical authorities, 
to the bishop, the archbishop, the pope, or even at times 



MONASTIC LIFE 241 

to the laity, against the laws of the church. The correspond- 
ence of Stephen of Toumai puts this beyond all question. 
For example, the regular canons of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes 
of Soissons entered into an open struggle against their abbot, 
Hugh. The canons, who were delegated to direct what was 
called a priory-cure, lived like parish cures, which was hardly 
in keeping with the rules of their order. The abbot of Saint- 
Jean-des-Vignes sought to preserve his authority over these 
canon-cures: he sought to reserve the right of transferring 
them, dismissing them, or recalling them to the abbey at any 
time he judged suitable. But this did not take the canons 
into account, and they invoked the support of the bishop 
of Soissons, who defended them against their superior. Out 
of this came a lawsuit in the court of Eome. The abbot and 
the bishop went to Rome to plead their causes, but, as always, 
the process dragged itself out eternally. Tired of the delay, 
they submitted their case to arbitrators, who decided in fa- 
vor of the abbot. Stephen of Toumai wrote a very fiery 
letter on the subject to the pope, in which he formally accused 
the canon-cures of having acquired money, which their rule 
forbade, and of using it to corrupt the bishop and influence 
him to work in their favor. 

In the abbey of Saint-Amand of Toumai, the monks com- 
plained of their abbot to the archbishop of Reims and re- 
fused him obedience. The archbishop ordered Stephen of 
Toumai to make an inquiry, and he reported on his commis- 
sion in these terms: 

"At your order, my father, I went to Saint-Amand where I 
found the monks far from amiable.^ The rebels continue in sedition 
and will perhaps die impenitent. They have nothing with which 
to reproach their abbot ; he is a learned man, pure, sober, and peace- 
ful, and an honest man. Of what do they complain? That he is 
more inclined to economy than to extravagance, and that he is not 
familiar enough with the sign language,'' and that he does not know 
how to say the words bean, cheese, and egg with his fingers." 

Pretexts, all of them! Stephen of Toumai adds that he 
attempted to punish the leaders of the conspiracy by trans- 

* Non amandos. Stephen of Tournai was fond of puns, 

* Language similar to that of our deaf and dumb, which the cloistered 
monks used when the rule of Saint Benedict forbade their speaking. 



242 SOCIAL FEANCE 

ferring them temporarily to another monastery and pro- 
hibiting them from leaving, under threat of excommunica- 
tion. But the rebels did not obey their bishop any more 
than their abbot, and they found the means of being ab- 
solved by the vidame of the archbishop of Reims, of which 
the bishop of Tournai then complained with indignation. 

He also addressed a strong protest to the bishop of Bourges, 
who protected the monks of Saint-Satur, a monastery of 
Berry, against their abbot. They appealed to the archbishop 
as soon as the abbot gave evidence of seeking to bring the 
order to the observance of the rule, and the latter allowed 
himself to be so influenced by their lies, says Stephen, that 
he commanded the abbot not to proceed against any of his 
monks as long as the suit begun by them in the archiepiscopal 
court was undecided. But Stephen of Tournai remarked 
very properly to the archbishop that such an injunction was 
a disaster for the monastic clergy. No discipline was longer 
possible in the abbeys ; there was disorder, dissoluteness, con- 
fusion in everything. He entreated the archbishop to give 
the abbot of Saint-Satur the right, consecrated by the rule of 
Saint Benedict and by the canons of the councils, of regu- 
larly correcting the faults of the monks; the right of ap- 
pointing, changing, and dismissing the officers placed under 
his orders. 

It is in the letters of Stephen of Tournai that the story 
of the monk Nicolas of Saint-Martin of Tournai is found — 
who, eternally in struggle with his abbot, one fine day, after 
having stolen the seal of the community, fled from the abbey, 
forged false letters intended to ruin his accuser, and, equipped 
with these documents, went to Eome to lodge his complaint. 
Stephen of Tournai was obliged to write to the pope, to warn 
him against the allegations of the fugitive monk, and it was 
on this occasion that, at the beginning of the letter, he gave 
vent to the following opinion on the inveterate evil from 
which the monastic world suffered: 



"It is a very eommon and usual fact that there are sons of con- 
tradiction and disobedience in our holy communities who love law- 
suits and disputes, who sow hatred among the brethren, who dehght 
in producing scandals, and in preparing civil wars which ruin us 
and make us an object of scorn for the stranger." 



MONASTIC LIFE 243 

When the abbot was a dishonest man or a spendthrift, he 
usually sided with the younger monks, stirred them up 
against the older ones, who were thus reduced to impotence, 
and thus, sustained by the vigorous and turbulent faction 
of the community, he wasted the property of the abbey as 
he pleased. Instances of this kind are not rare, and we are 
informed among others, again by Stephen of Tournai, of 
an abbot of Saint-Martin of Tournai, named John, who used 
such methods until he provoked the most intolerable scandal. 
The archbishop of Eeims and the bishop were obliged to take 
rigorous measures. The abbot, John, threatened by excom- 
munication, submitted to confessing his faults and to signing 
a document, making the following promises on the Gospel: 

"I promise to preserve perpetual chastity, to assist re^larly in 
the offices, to eat in the refectory with the brethren, to sleep with 
them in the dormitory, not to entertain any but respectable guests 
in my chamber, to take with me, when it is necessary to leave the 
monastery on business, old and discreet brethren about whom there 
can be no unpleasant gossip, not to allow any monk to go out 
unless he is accompanied and for no reason except that of urgent 
necessity, and especially not to allow young monks to leave the 
abbey to go to plays, processions, or places of worldly amusement. 
Finally never to make a decision without having previously consulted 
a council of six monks whom the bishop shall designate from among 
the older brethren." 

This is a series of promises which fully enlightens us con- 
cerning the conduct of the heads of certain abbeys. 

The facts disclosed in the letters of Stephen of Tournai 
will suffice to bring to light the internal vice which disor- 
ganized and broke up the ancient Benedictine order: the 
tendency of the monastic personnel to thrust aside the au- 
thority of its natural head, the abbot, and to rely on outside 
powers to resist him. But what shows best how deep the evil 
was, is the civil war which broke out in the order of Grand- 
mont and lasted nearly seventy years. 

The order of Grandmont in Limousin, founded in 1073 
by Stephen of Muret, at the outset received a very strict rule. 
Like the Cistercians and the Carthusians, the Grandmontains, 
in the beginning, went to the extreme of asceticism and mor- 
tification. One of the characteristic traits of their rule was 



244 SOCIAL FRANCE 

the absolute isolation of the monk, his anxiety to avoid 
all contact with the worldly element and to spare himself 
every occupation and every thought of a temporal nature, 
in order to devote himself exclusively to prayer and to tasks 
of moral perfection. The founder of the order also desired 
the care of the material interests, to be confided exclusively 
to a company of lay brothers, who should be instructed to 
look after the subsistence and support of the monks, who 
were the true religious ; the latter, absorbed in monastic serv- 
ices, were to live a purely spiritual life, without any cares 
of a profane sort. The intention was excellent, and all went 
well during the first years of the foundation. But when, in 
the course of the twelfth century, the order, — heaped with the 
gifts of kings, high barons, and the faithful of both France 
and England, — had great possessions, both in land and 
money, it was necessary to increase the number of lay broth- 
ers charged with the administration, in the same proportion, 
because the monks of Grandmont were not permitted to aid 
in any way and did not even have the right to write letters 
or pass acts. Thus the order of Grandmont, at the acces- 
sion of Philip Augustus, presented the curious phenomenon 
of a religious congregation which was composed of a small 
number of monks who were governed in temporal affairs by 
a body of lay administrators twenty times as large. The 
monks could do nothing and knew nothing of the material 
and financial status of their monasteries. The lay brothers, 
on the contrary, — who only belonged to the monastery ex- 
ternally, — had all the money, all the property, and all the 
authority in their hands. The latter, having the numbers 
and the material power, naturally came to believe that they 
represented the order itself and that the real management of 
the congregation, — that is to say, the office of the prior- 
general, the head of the mother house of Grandmont, and 
the positions of the individual priors in the branch houses, 
the obediences, — should belong to them. This was the re- 
versal of the natural order of things, as the contemporary 
writers, especially Guyot of Provins, said. A religious con- 
gregation, dominated and directed by laymen, was, to use a 
metaphor which was frequently applied to the condition, 
putting the plow before the oxen. 



MONASTIC LIFE 245 

War was inevitable between the clerical and lay elements 
of the order of Grandmont: it broke out in 1185 on the 
occasion of the election of a prior-general, the monks having 
one candidate and the lay brothers another. The schism 
lasted three years, and the destruction which was the con- 
Bequence affected every house of the order. In all the 
convents of the Grandmontains the lay brothers deposed the 
monks, shut them in their cells, gave them scarcely anything 
to live on, oppressed them with bad treatment, and did not 
even hesitate to expel them. It was a terrible scandal! 
Bishops, kings, and popes intervened to stop it and to re- 
establish peace between the hostile brothers, but scarcely 
had the mediatoics ceased their efforts than the struggle broke 
out more violently, and everything began anew. 

In 1188, after serious efforts on the part of the papacy and 
of the government of Philip Augustus, peace was believed 
to be definitive. Pope Clement III annulled the election of 
the two priors-general, about which the chapter was wran- 
gling ; caused a third to be elected, to whom a large majority 
of the Grandmontains swore obedience ; renewed the privi- 
leges of the congregation, and confirmed the rule. On his 
side, the king of France sanctioned the unexpected agree- 
ment with his approval; and the heads of the two factions 
appeared before him and gave each other the kiss of peace. 
But, two years later, war raged anew within the order: 
everywhere the same scenes of violence were repeated; the 
same expulsions of monks by the lay brothers took place. 
The monks appealed to Rome, where their suit was conducted 
with traditional slowness. But the papacy, which should 
have ended the debate by stringent measures, hesitated, did 
not act, and for a very simple reason, which Stephen of 
Tournai gives, without any beating round the bush, in a 
letter addressed to the pope. It was not the monks, but 
the lay brothers of Grandmont who had the money, and these 
boasted of using it to render all the claims of their adver- 
saries useless. 

" They did not rely on Justice ; they placed their hopes, as they 
themselves said so that any one could hear it, in their pecuniary 
gifts, and in the corruption which they freely practised." 



246 SOCIAL FRANCE 

However, the disorders took on such proportions that the 
Capetian government found itself obliged to intervene for 
the second time. In 1190, Philip Augustus, before leaving 
for the crusade, summoned the monks and lay brothers of 
Grandmont to Saint-Denis and used threats and prayers to 
persuade them to keep the peace. But scarcely had he left 
than the quarrels were revived, while the representatives of 
the two factions continued to plead before an irresolute, 
powerless pope at Rome. It was then that Stephen of Tour- 
nai, in concert with the abbots of Saint-Denis, Saint-Germain- 
des-Pres, and Saint- Victor, wrote that letter of 1191 to the 
pope, in which he denounced the abuses committed by the 
lay brothers and the deplorable situation of the oppressed 
monks, and threatened the Holy See with the indignation of 
the king of France. 

Nothing was done. The papacy, even that of Innocent III, 
did not dare to settle this inextricable affair. In 1214, they 
were still struggling within the order of Grandmont, and the 
pope received a distressing letter from the monks. 



" What is going to become of us, wretches that we are, fallen 
under the hard bondage of the laity, and the object of scorn and 
derision to all who know us? We continually cry out and com- 
plain but no one hears our cry; we have thoroughly exposed our 
sufferings, but no one comes to our aid. There are no more prophets 
in Israel! Moses is no more, and his successor does not imitate 
his works. Joshua is not faithful to his people; he has made an 
alliance with the stranger; he has become corrupt, and he now 
pleads against us. We do- not see in all the people a leader called 
of God to deliver us from the lay brothers. They oppress us in 
an incredible way, . . . destroy the houses of our order, violate 
the rules of religion, waste the goods of the community, and dis- 
tribute them to the lay members of their families, or to their friends. 
They lay violent hands on us, threaten to break our heads if we 
attempt toi resist their caprice in any way whatever, and in order 
to punish us they put foul things into our food. They claim all 
our temporal goods, and then pretend to teach us in spiritual 
matters. . . . One would never finish if he attempted to complete 
the list of outrages, calumnies, threats, and deeds of which we are 
the victims on the part of those false brothers, especially this year. 
Holy Father, we are sending to you, as bearers of this letter, 
our true brothers, men faithful and religious and of good repute. 
You can learn from them in full confidence what would take too 
long to set forth in writing. They have been eye witnesses of the 



MONASTIC LIFE 247 

things they will reveal to you. We throw ourselves at the feet of 
Your Holiness; we devoutly pray and beseech you, if you have 
any sentiment of pity, to grant the request which our brethren 
shall present on behalf of our whole group. You are our hope; 
since your promotion to the see of Saint Peter you have been our 
only refuge. Save us, Seignior, from the dominion of the bar- 
barians, from the servitude to the laity to which we have been 
subject for so long a time, as a punishment perhaps for our sins. 
If your support fails us who will aid us? We do not see any one 
besides you to whom we could have recourse. Make an end of our 
suit, which no one has yet settled conclusively. Our letter is already 
too long and risks fatiguing you. We close now, your humble 
though unworthy servants, tried beyond all limits and profoundly 
anxious. Seignior, have mercy on us." 

The popes of the middle ages were often broader-minded 
and more accessible to sentiments of humanity and justice 
than those v^ho represented them. They were better than 
their cardinals and legates: as was true, for instance, of 
Gregory VII, who was much less uncompromising and harsh 
than those who acted in his name; and this also applies to 
Innocent III, who was often betrayed by his agents. What 
brought on the crisis of Grandmont was the singular attitude 
of the cardinals sent to France, and especially of the legate, 
Robert of Courcon. He showed such partiality in favor of 
the lay brothers that they availed themselves of it to renew 
their excesses. Beaten, wounded, expelled from their con- 
vents, the monks appealed to the legate of the pope. Robert 
of Courcon replied by suspending their prior-general and 
declaring their appeal null and void. Thereupon Innocent 
III reproved his agent in very strong terms: 

" Truly we are astonished at you, on being informed of your 
incredible conduct. A man possessed of reason would not have 
dared to act in that way. By what right are you constituted judge 
of appeals to us? What wise and prudent man would permit him- 
self to declare the prior of Grandmont suspended from office after 
his appeal legally lodged at Rome? How are you on your own 
authority able to absolve these lay brothers, and to exempt them 
from obedience to their superiors?" 

And the pope ended by annulling the act of his legate, by 
confiding to the archbishop of Bourges the task of executing 
the decisions justly made by the prior of Grandmont. 



248 SOCIAL FRANCE 

This letter of Innocent III was dated in the month of 
March, 1214, but a proof that it did not produce any great 
effect is the fact that two years later, in 1216, the order of 
Grandmont being still the prey of civil dissension, the same 
pope wrote to the archbishops of Bourges, Sens, and Tours, 
ordering them to punish those who were in insurrection 
against the prior-general and against the rules of the con- 
gregation. The troubles continued until the middle of the 
thirteenth century. 



CHAPTEE VIII ' 

THE NOBLE AT WAR 

Considering feudalism as a whole, with the exception of 
an elite class of which we shall speak later on, the habits and 
customs of the nobles had not changed since the eleventh 
century. Almost everywhere the castellan remained a brutal 
and pillaging soldier, making war, fighting in tournaments, 
hunting in times of peace, ruining himself in excesses, op- 
pressing his own peasants, levying contributions on those of 
his neighbors, and sacking the lands of the church. 

At the beginning of the thirteenth century, the monks of 
the abbey of Saint-Martin-du-Canigou drew up an inter- 
minable list of misdeeds committed by Pons of Vernet, a 
castellan of Roussillon. This noble was a veritable brigand. 

"He broke down our fence, and seized eleven cows. One night 
he entered our property at Vernet and cut down our fruit trees. 
The next day, he seized and bound two of our servants in the woods 
and took three sous and six deniers away from them. The same 
day, he took the tunic, stockings, and shoes of Bernard of Mosset 
on our farm at Egat. Another time he kUled two cows and wounded 
four others on the farm of Col-de-Jou and he carried away all the 
cheeses that he found there. Another day, he forced the men of 
Rial to ransom themselves for fifteen sous, and their fear was so 
great that they put themselves under the protection of Peter Dumo- 
lait, in consideration of ^fifteen sous down, and an annual rental 
of a pound of wax. At Eglies, he took one hundred and fifty sheep, 
a donkey, and three children whom he would not give up without 
a ransom of one hundred sous, some capes, some tunics, and cheeses. 
Another time, he took a tunic from Peter of Rial, a leather-strap 
and a knife from Bonfils, two capes, a fur, and a table-cloth from 
Pierre Amat. . . . And, after he and his father, R. du Vernet, had 
sworn in the church of Sainte-Marie of Vernet that he would leave 
the abbey in peace, he stole eight sous and seven hens from our 
men of Avidan, and he forced us to buy over again the boundary-line 
of Odilon which his father had sold to us. . . . He stole from us 
our herd of Vernet, consisting of more than five hundred sheep, 
and he seized four men, who, happily, succeeded in escaping. He 

249 



250 SOCIAL FRANCE 

then seized two men of Odilon whom he ransomed for fifteen sous, 
and one of whom is still in captivity." 

This Pons of Vernet was not the only tyrant of the canton ; 
in the same mountainous region other barons of higher rank 
acted similarly: the only difference was that their field of 
operations was wider and their profits were larger. The 
will of Guinard, count of Roussillon, written in 1172, — that 
is, a few years before the time of Philip Augustus, — is a 
most instructive document. It was feudalism itself at the 
point of death, admitting its robberies, and trying to expiate 
them by indemnifying its victims. Almost all the articles 
of this testament were modeled on the same formula; here 
are the most expressive: 

" To the church and the inhabitants of Palestres, because of the 
harm which I have done them, I return two thousand Melgueil sous. 

" To the men of Ceret, because of the misdeeds from which they 
suffered, one thousand Melgueil sous. 

" To the men of Candeill, from whom I stole their herd, I give 
one hundred Melgueil sous. 

" To Peter Martin, a merchant of Perpignan, for the harm which 
a robber caused him, I give one hundred and fifty Melgueil sous." 

This Count Guinard had evidently had his share in the 
robbery. 

" To the men of Villemolaque, one thousand sous ; to the men of 
Canomals, three hundred sous ; to the men of Moreillas, five hundred 
sous; to the men of Boulon, five hundred sous; to the men of 
Domanova, one thousand «ous; to the men of Begis, one hundred 
sous ..." 

This is not the end of the list. There follows a formal 
unambiguous confession: 

" On account of the share of the pillage of Pons of Navaga, which 
I received {pro parte atroeini Pontii de Navaga quam ego hahui), 
I give one thousand Melgueil sous, and I direct that one hundred 
new tunics be given to the poor out of this sum." 

It would be impossible to show more clearly that Guinard, 
count of Roussillon, was participating in the profits of a 
band of robbers. 



THE NOBLE AT WAE 251 

It is not probable that these two lords of Roussillon, about 
whom chance has given ns information, were exceptions. 
They acted we will not say like all the nobles of their coun- 
try, — for in all times and in every country there are honest 
men, — but like many men of their caste. If we betake our- 
selves to other parts of France, we see the same spectacle. 
In Berry, in 1209, the lord of Deols and, in 1219, the lord 
of Sully were declared guilty of having plundered merchants ; 
and Philip Augustus was obliged to interfere and treat them 
with rigor. And the great barons, the feudal sovereigns, stole 
like the ordinary castellans. Qui V, viscoimt of Limoges, 
found it convenient to send his soldiers to seize goods in 
the markets, and he imprisoned those who resisted them. 
Hugh III, the duke of Burgundy, always at the end of his 
resources, was really a robber on the great highways: he 
plundered the French and Flemish merchants who crossed 
his lands; and this was one of the reasons for Philip Augus- 
tus' expedition into Burgundy in 1186. 

The famous Renaud of Dammartin, count of Boulogne, one 
of the greatest lords of this time, the special enemy of the 
king of France and the man who worked hardest to or- 
ganize the coalition vanquished at Bouvines, was in other 
respects only a common brigand. One of his recent biog- 
raphers, M. Henri Malo, has tried to ennoble this man by 
representing him as the incarnation of feudal hatred for 
monarchical centralization. He has shown that this baron, 
in fighting against royalty, was merely true to his principles 
and fought for the independence of his possessions, as a man 
who wanted to remain master at home. That is all very well, 
but, as a matter of fact, we know that the count of Boulogne 
received money from the English and the Germans to resist 
Philip Augustus and to raise enemies against him on all sides. 
The idea of a nationality or of a country to which one must 
be loyal barely existed among the great lords of the time of 
Louis XIV and Conde ; the more reason why one should not 
search for such a spirit in a baron of Philip Augustus. But 
M, Malo was, at any rate, obliged to recognize that his 
" good-looking, brave and strong, intelligent and learned " 
hero did not content himself with the rewards of his 



252 SOCIAL FRANCE 

political role; he was, besides, a robber with an anned 
band, and a vulgar pillager of peasants, merchants, and 
citizens. 

" From the beginning of the government of Renaud of 
Boulogne," admits M. Malo, " his reputation of loving money 
and of securing it by somewhat sharp practices was already 
well established: it is true that, if he loved it, it was only 
to spend it; the nobility of this motive, however, could not 
convince the people whom he despoiled of the righteousness 
of his procedure. Every one tried his best to escape him, 
and whole communities found it prudent to put their wealth 
out of his reach: the inhabitants of Calais, for instance, con- 
fided all their wealth to the monks of Andres in 1191." And 
M. Malo himself tells us a few of these " somewhat sharp 
practices " which Renaud of Boulogne employed to fill his 
purse. He pictures him stealing the flocks of the monks of 
the neighborhood, seizing the grain which they had stored 
in their barns, and appropriating what suited him from their 
woods, their lands, and their meadows. He tells us another 
exploit of his which caused a great stir in 1190. William, 
bishop of Longchamps, an old chancellor of Richard the Lion- 
Hearted, exiled from England, came to seek a place of refuge 
on the soil of France. He landed on the shores of Boulonnais. 
But hardly had he entered the country before Renaud fell 
on him with his troop and took from him his horses, his bag- 
gage, the sacred vases of his chapel, even his episcopal cope, 
and then allowed him to continue on his way. The episode 
created a scandal. The archbishop of Reims reprimanded 
the young count of Boulogne severely, demanded the return 
of the stolen goods, and excommunicated the robber. Noth- 
ing came of it. " Renaud," says M. Malo, " listened to the 
remonstrances, but returned nothing, not even the cope of 
the bishop." This was the man whom his biographer calls 
" the type of the great French lord of the end of the twelfth 
and the beginning of the thirteenth century," And when 
M. Malo, a little later, adds, ' ' At this period, the pettiest 
owner of a coat of mail or of a tower believed he had a right 
to pillage and assault anybody passing within reach of his 
sword," and justifies this phrase by examples taken from 
the counties of Guines and of Boulogne, where the ravages of 



THE NOBLE AT WAE 253 

the feudal lords were frightful, he states a fact, a truth, 
which could be applied to almost all France. 

The men of the time recognized this themselves. Giraud 
of Borneil, a troubadour who wrote at the beginning of the 
thirteenth century, deplored these habits of pillage, unworthy 
of men of the sword: 

" I used to see the barons, in beautiful armor, giving and follow- 
ing tournaments, and I heard those who had delivered the best 
blows spoken of for many a day. Now, honor lies in stealing 
cattle, sheep, and lambs. Oh, fie upon the knight who drives off 
flocks of bleating sheep, or pillages churches and travelers, and then 
appears before a lady ! " 

Another contemporary, also a Provengal troubadour, Ber- 
tran of Lamanon, composed what was called a tengon, a 
satiric dialogue, in which he ridiculed Gui, a former brigand, 
who had become a bard: 

"Friend Gui, I am indeed charmed with your good sense, for 
you propose to try every occupation. I hear it said that you, who 
for so long infested the highways, have now advanced so far that 
you represent law and order. After having stolen cattle, goats, 
lambs, and sheep, you have become a minstrel and recite verses 
and songs. You have raised yourself to a higher honor." 

Giraud of Borneil, whom we have just quoted, was the 
better fitted to complain of the ravages of the lords, because 
he himself had been their victim. These men had no respect 
for poets. One day Giraud was returning from the court 
of Castile, where he had been received with enthusiasm and 
overwhelmed with gifts; as he was passing through the 
mountains of Navarre, he was despoiled by the officers of 
Sancho the Strong, king of Navarre. 

Feudalism lived on booty: it stole by robbing merchants 
and travelers; it also stole by levying illegal taxes on the 
peasants and the citizens of the fief; and this exploitation 
was universal. To brigandage by force was added brigandage 
by seigniorial agents, which consisted of arbitrary taxes and 
corvees. It had, no doubt, decreased in many respects within 
the century, for a certain number of cities, towns, and even 
/villages had obtained guarantees in the form of charters or 



254 SOCIAL FRANCE 

contracts. The seignior finally began to comprehend that 
the way to get a return from his fief was not to exhaust it 
by exaction and turn it into a desert. But, one must admit 
that the nobility did not everywhere show this elementary 
intelligence; and, if there were many localities which were 
guaranteed against arbitrary exploitation by a duly executed 
charter, much more numerous were those which had no fran- 
chises and which the seignior could fleece at will. The cities 
found a means of defence; but what resistance was possible 
in the country? The property and the life of the peasant 
were hardly safer in peace than in war. 

On this subject one should read the bold utterances against 
feudal excesses contained in one of the sermons expressly 
addressed by the famous preacher, Jacques of Vitry, to the 
princes and the knights, ad proceres et milites:^ 

"All that the peasant amasses in a year by stubborn work, the 
knight, the noble, devours in an hour. . . . Not content with his 
pay as soldier, not content with his revenues and with the annual 
tax levied on his subjects, he further despoils them by illicit taxes 
and heavy exactions. The poor are exhausted, the fruit of their 
years of pain and sorrow is extorted from them." 

Especially does the preacher attack the odious right of 
mortmain. He thunders against the nobles who steal the 
inheritance of the dead, the goods of the widow and the 
orphan : 

" The father dies, and the seignior takes from the unfortunate 
children the cow which should have nourished them. Those who 
take advantage of the right of mortmain are murderers, because 
they condemn the orphan to death by hunger: they are like the 
vermin which feasts on corpses." 

Elsewhere he compares the nobles to wolves, and their 
agents and officers to crows: 

"As wolves and jackals devour a carrion, while the crows croak 
overhead awaiting their share in the feast, so, when the barons and 
the knights pillage their subjects, the provosts, the preceptors, and 
others of the hellish crew rejoice at the prospect of devouring the 
rest." 

'Bibl. nat., ms. lat. 17509, fol. 104-108. 



THE NOBLE AT WAK 255 

And these metaphors become ever stronger: 

" Those lords who do not work and live off the work of the poor 
are like those unclean parasites which imbed themselves in the skin, 
prey upon it^ and live off the substance which serves them as a home." 

The provosts were no less rapacious than their masters: 
they ground down and were ground down in turn. One 
might call them leeches: they sucked the blood of the miser- 
able and were obliged to disgorge it for the profit of the 
seignior, more powerful than they. 

What form did this exploitation of the poor by the lord 
and his agents not take ? Means were found for everything ; 
Jacques of Vitry, to renew the attention of his auditors and 
bring them to their senses, relates the following anecdote: 

" One day, a bailiff, the officer of a certain count, wishing to 
please his master, said to him : * Seignior, if you will Usten to me, 
I will tell you a way to make a good sum of money each year.' 
* With pleasure,* replied the count. ' Allow me then, seignior, to 
sell the sun on all your land.' *How,' asked the count, 'can one 
sell God's sun ? ' ' Very simply : many of your men wash their 
clothes and dry them in the sun. If they give you no more than 
twelve deniers for each piece of cloth, you will make much money.' 
And this is how that bad officer led his seignior to sell the sun's rays." 

Jacques of Yitry incessantly complained of the rapacity 
of the strong and the misery of the oppressed; he felt that 
this was the fundamental evil of feudal society, and he tried 
to make the guilty afraid. " You have been ravening 
wolves," he told them, " and that is why you shall go to 
howl in hell." But, for those whom the prospect of eternal 
pains would not sufficiently frighten, he had another argu- 
ment, which was more human and more convincing: 

" The great must make themselves loved by the small ; they must 
be careful not to inspire hate. The humble must not be scorned: 
if they can aid us, they can also do us harm. You know that many 
serfs have killed their masters or have burnt their houses." 

No preacher or moralist of this period of the middle ages 
has more clearly painted the sad effects of the avidity of the 
noble classes and has assailed feudal brigandage in more vigor- 



256 SOCIAL FRANCE 

ous terms. After speaking of this thirst for money, which was 
the principal vice of the nobility, he might have gone further 
and have described the nobles with their passion for fighting 
and their bloody instincts, which the custom of pillage and 
the continuity of a state of war too well explain. This was 
the second salient characteristic, another general trait of 
feudalism. On this point, as on the other, history shows that 
the preachers could hardly exaggerate. 

Here, for example, is Bernard of Cahuzac, a petty lord 
of Perigord, who is described by the historian, Peter of Vaux- 
de-Cernay. A veritable wild beast: 

" He spends his life in looting and destroying churches, in attack- 
ing pilgrims, in oppressing the widow and the poor. It pleases him 
especially to mutilate the innocent. In a single monastery, that of 
the black monks of Sarlat, one hundred and fifty men and women 
were found, whose hands and feet had been cut off, or whose eyes 
had been put out by him. His wife, as cruel as he, aided in his 
deeds. She took pleasure in torturing these poor women herself. 
She had their breasts slit, or their nails torn out so that they would 
not be able to work." 

Another example: 

"Foueaud, a knight and a comrade of Simon de Montfort, 
angered even the warriors by his cruelties. Every prisoner who did 
not have the means of paying one hundred sous as ransom was 
condemned to death. He inclosed his prisoners in subterranean 
dungeons and let them die of starvation: sometimes he had them 
brought forth half dead and thrown into cesspools before his own 
eyes. It was said that on one of his last expeditions, he returned 
with two captives, a father and son, and that he forced the father 
to hang his own son." 

To realize how far the love of war and of its butcheries 
could go — to what point pillaging, burning, and killing were 
a pleasure and a veritable need to the barons of this period — 
it is enough to study the life and the works of the troubadour, 
Bertran de Bom. This poet was himself a noble and castel- 
lan; he spent his life fighting and in making others fight. 
He liked war for its own sake, because it was beautiful to 
see troops clash and blood flow; all the more because booty 
was thus won and princes were obliged to give largess to the 



THE NOBLE AT WAR 257 

knights who fought for them, Bertran de Born's authorship 
of the famous sirvente, " The gay time of Easter that makes 
flowers and leaves come forth is very pleasing to me," has 
been contested. It is a martial song, in which this well- 
known verse is found: 

"I tell you that I never eat, sleep, or drink so well, as when I 
hear the cry : * Up and at them ! ' f ronj both sides, and when I 
hear the neighing of riderless horses in the thicket, and hear voices 
shouting : * Help ! Help ! ' and see men fall on the green of the 
moats, and see the dead pierced in the side by the shafts of spears 
gay with pennons." 

If this poetry was not of his writing, — ^which has never 
been proved, — it is much like his style, as appears from the 
following selection, the authenticity of which has never been 
questioned : 

" The joyous season approaches when our ships shall land, when 
King Richard, wanton and valiant as he never was before, shall 
come. Now shall we see gold and silver spent; newly built founda- 
tions shall break with envy, walls shall crumble, towers shall subside 
and fall to pieces, and his enemies shall taste the prison and its 
chains. I love the mel^e of shields with blue and vermillion tints, 
flags and pennons of different colors, tents and rich pavilions spread 
over the plain, the breaking of lances, the riddling of shields, the 
splitting of gleaming helmets, and the giving and taking of blows." 

This man could not understand why the barons should 
make peace, and he covered those who did so with sarcasm. 
* * They are, ' ' he said, ' * like base metal, from which nothing 
can be formed, however much one reshape and recast it; the 
spur cannot make them stir." ** I have broken on them," 
he says elsewhere, '* more than a thousand goads without 
being able to make a single one of them run or trot; there 
is not one of them that one cannot clip, shear, or shoe." 
" They are full of audacity at the beginning of winter," he 
continues, ** but they lose their courage in the spring, when 
the time for action comes." To content Bertran de Bom, 
slaughter would have to be continuous; as soon as it ceased, 
he wrote dejectedly: 

" Bravery and valor are dead. There are kingdoms, but no more 
kings; counties, but no more counts; there are strong castles, but 



258 SOCIAL FRANCE 

no more castellans. One can still see beautiful ladies, and beautiful 
clothes, and well-dressed people; but where are the doughty knights 
of the lays? Richard is a lion, but King Philip appears to me to 
be a lamb." 

Richard the Lion-Hearted was the ideal of Bertran de 
Bom ; but to make a lamb out of Philip Augustus, because he 
only liked profitable wars, passes the bounds of poetic license. 
It must be noticed that the region in which our author lived, 
Limousin and the neighboring countries of Perigord and 
Angoumois, was perhaps the part of France where feudalism 
was most turbulent; where the nobles fought most bloodily 
among themselves or against their king. There, especially, 
war raged and was a permanent scourge. It was truly diffi- 
cult to satisfy Bertran de Born. 

However, his poems are not those in which the voluptuous- 
ness of carnage was voiced with the most expressive savagery. 
The authors of certain chansons de geste, contemporaries of 
Philip Augustus, in at least their later writings, — such as the 
poem Lorraitis or Girart de Boussillon, — went further. Their 
heroes reached the limit of ferocity. In the song Garin le 
Lorrain, Duke Begon, seizing in his hands the entrails of an 
enemy whom he had just killed, threw them in the face of 
William of Montclin, with these words, " Here, vassal, take 
the heart of your friend: you can salt it and roast it." 
Garin himself opened the body of WiUiam of Blancafort. 
" He drew the heart, the lungs, and the liver out of it. 
Hernaut, his companion, seized the heart, cut it into four 
pieces, and both strewed the road with these pieces of still 
palpitating flesh." After a battle, noble prisoners were kept, 
to be put to ransom; but as no profit could be made out of 
prisoners of an inferior class, — such as archers, arbalisters, 
and servants of the army, — they were massacred or mutilated, 
to make them incapable of service. The lay Girart de 
Boussillon leaves no doubt on this point. Here is a pertinent 
passage: " Girart and his men conducted the massacre; 
among the living they kept two hundred and eighty men, 
all owners of castles, and put them apart at one side." 
Later : * ' The Burgundians were barbarous and cruel ; we had 
not a squire or a cross-bowman whom they did not give an 
empty sleeve or a wooden leg." Here the writer seems to 



THE NOBLE AT WAE 259 

condemn these practices; but, as a fact, no one gave them 
up, not even the king: 

" ' By my head,' said Charles Martel, ' I do not worry over what 
you have said, Fulc; I laugh at your threats, as at a quince. 
Every knight that I take, I shall honor by cutting off his nose or 
his ears. If it be a squire or a foot soldier, he shall lose an arm 
or a leg.' " 

In another passage thirty squires, all disfigured, arrive 
at the palace of the king : 

" Each had a foot or an arm cut off, or an eye put out. They 
came before the king in this state and said to him : ' Sire, it was 
in your service that we were mutilated in this way.'" 

We know how much we can depend on the historical value 
of information furnished us by the chansons de geste. We 
know that even in his pictures of war, even in his recitals 
of battles, the poet could not help introducing features which 
were entirely fanciful or distorting the truth by stretching it 
beyond all measure. When, for example, we see the armies 
of kings or great lords meet in formidable clashes, general 
melees, or drawn battles, — in which enormous numbers of 
men, hundreds of thousands, appear in line and kill each 
other, — we say that the poet allowed his imagination to run 
riot. In actual history, as it appears in the wars of the 
Capetians and the Plantagenets, the armies were, on the con- 
trary, very small, the battles extremely rare ; there were skir- 
mishes and ravages, but few engagements of great masses: 
decisive action was avoided, they did not venture to ruin the 
adversary in a single blow; they only aimed to ruin him by 
degrees: the nobles captured and ransomed much oftener 
than they killed each other. Besides, when one reflects that 
in the poems all knights are of herculean force; that with a 
single blow of the sword they strike off arms, legs, and heads ; 
that they cut an enemy in two and cleave his helmet, his 
head, and his breast with a marvelous ease; when, too, one 
notes that, though wounded, they have an incredible power 
of resistance, so that, though transfixed, mutilated, or with 
brain laid bare, they resume the saddle and continue to fight 



260 SOCIAL FEANCE 

as though they had felt nothing, one must say that here imagi- 
nation had reached its utmost bounds. 

Barring this kind of exaggeration, these tales of wars and 
battles contain a mass of material taken from real life. The 
poet needed not resort to imagination ; he had only to look at 
what was going on about him. What he says of the ferocity 
of the warrior and of the massacre of useless prisoners is 
fully confirmed by historical documents. What he says of 
butcheries of peasants and of frightful devastation of an 
enemy 's territory is also entirely true. War at that time 
consisted chiefly of destruction and pillage. The object was 
to do the greatest possible harm to the adversary, by setting 
his villages on fire and by massacring the peasants, who were 
his property and his source of income. Here the authors of 
the chansons de geste say no more than is found on every 
page of the chronicles. It was the citizen, the monk, and 
especially the peasant who bore the expense of feudal wars. 

The lay Girart de Boussillon is very instructive in this 
respect. One of the heroes of this poem, speaking of an 
adversary, cries out: 

" He may attack us, the cruel coward. He will chop down our 
vines and our trees, he will undermine our walls and our fish-ponds, 
he will open our water-mains." 

And, farther on, the same definition of war : 

" He sees a stronger come and attack him, cut off his vines, root 
up his trees, lay waste his land, and make it a desert; he sees his 
castles taken by storm, his walls broken, his moats filled up, all his 
men captured or killed." 

Here is what victory meant to the leader of an expedition: 

" He does not leave a good knight alive as far as Baiol, nor 
treasure, nor monastery, nor church, nor shrine, nor censer, nor cross, 
nor sacred vase; everything that he seizes he gives to his com- 
panions. He makes so cruel a war that he does not lay hands on 
a man without killing, hanging, or mutilating him." 

But in Lorrains we find a more detailed and complete 
picture of the effects of the march of an army through an 



THE NOBLE AT WAR 261 

enemy's country. Here is a picture ready-made for us, in 
which nothing is lacking: 

" They start to march. The scouts and the incendiaries lead ; 
after them come the foragers who are to gather the spoils and carry 
them in the great baggage train. The tumult begins. The peasants, 
having just come out to the fields, turn back, uttering loud cries; 
the shepherds gather their flocks and drive them towards the 
neighboring woods in the hope of saving them. The incendiaries 
set the villages on fire, and the foragers visit and sack them; the 
distracted inhabitants are burnt or led apart with their hands tied 
to be held for ransom. Everywhere alarm bells ring, fear spreads 
from side to side and becomes general. On all sides one sees 
helmets shining, pennons floating, and horsemen covering the plain. 
Here hands are laid on money; there cattle, donkeys, and flocks 
are seized. The smoke spreads, the flames rise, the peasants and 
the shepherds in consternation flee in all directions." 

Where the knights have passed, there is nothing left : 

"In the cities, in the towns, and on the small farms, wind-mills 
no longer turn, chimneys no longer smoke, the cocks have ceased 
their crowing, and the dogs their barking. Grass grows in the 
houses and between the flag-stones of the churches, for the priests 
have abandoned the services of God, and the crucifixes lie broken 
on the ground. The pilgrim might go six days without finding 
any one to give him a loaf of bread or a drop of wine. Freemen 
have no more business with their neighbors; briars and thorns grow 
where villages stood of old." 



The ideal of the noble vsrho fought was to make the land of 
the enemy desert; and the noble was ever fighting. At this 
period war existed everywhere. War was the function, the 
profession of the noble; he was above all else a soldier, the 
leader of a band, and had corresponding tastes and habits; 
he not only loved war, but he lived from it. He passed his 
youth in preparing for it; when he became of age, he was 
knighted, and he waged war as long as his strength per- 
mitted him to do so, even in his old age. His home was a 
guard-room or fortress; his castle a means of attack and of 
defense. When by chance he was at peace, — which was not 
often, — he still kept up the appearance of war, by fighting 
in tournaments ; for we shall see that tournaments were 



262 SOCIAL FRANCE 

diminutive wars and the occasion of slaughter and booty. 
In spite of the (inconsiderable) advance of culture, in spite 
of the efforts of the clergy, of kings, and of several great 
lords who had become rulers, war was practically a perma- 
nent scourge, almost everywhere in France. In the society 
of that day war was the normal state. 

We have some difficulty in admitting the truth of this para- 
doxical and monstrous fact. With our habits and peaceful 
customs, with the overscrupulous protection with which mod- 
ern society surrounds us, our properties and our persons, we 
have great trouble in picturing to ourselves a country like 
the France of Philip Augustus — divided into provinces, whose 
inhabitants formed so many small nations, which hated each 
other; these provinces themselves subdivided into a multi- 
tude of seigniories or fiefs, whose owners were forever fight- 
ing; not only the barons, but the little castellans, living in 
an unsociable isolation and constantly fighting against their 
sovereigns, their equals, or their subjects; and, furthermore, 
those rivalries between city and city, village and village, val- 
ley and valley, those wars between neighbors, which then 
seemed to burst forth almost spontaneously from the diversity 
of the soil itself. How could laborers live in such chaos, in 
the midst of these hostile elements? How could the peas- 
ants, already so exhausted by the excesses of seigniorial ex- 
ploitation and natural scourges, resist these daily disorders, 
of which they were always the first victims? That is what 
we wonderingly ask; and we can only answer that these men 
worked in the midst of devastation and pillage, as they lived 
in the midst of pestilences and famines; that the nobles al- 
ways found enough men to murder and torture, and enough 
hovels to burn. 

We must pass from province to province to convince our- 
selves of the reality of these innumerable wars, which put lay 
feudalism at outs with itself and with the other classes of 
society at one and the same moment throughout all France. 
Though information is precise and abundant for some re- 
gions, it is not for others: a complete and minute statement 
of these scenes of devastation would be impossible; in any 
case, it would be interminable. We can, however, choose 
certain striking events which left the strongest impression 



THE NOBLE AT WAR 263 

on contemporaries and which were, therefore, embodied in the 
records and the chronicles. Here and there we can point 
out the more general types of feudal wars, with an almost 
absolute certainty that what happened in one province also 
happened in others, and that the warlike and pillaging in- 
stincts of the caste of knights caused the same evils every- 
where. Naturally, the commonplaces of political history — 
like those, for example, which concern the war of the Cape- 
tians with the Plantagenets and the great feudal lords — AAdll 
not be discussed here. We remember that the wars and the 
conquests of Philip Augustus put a great part of France 
to fire and bloodshed for almost the whole of his reign; at 
least, until 1214, the date of his final victory at Bouvines. 
But, under this first substratum of historical wars, there were 
many others among the different classes of the feudal hier- 
archy — an infinity of small wars, devastation, and local con- 
flicts, in which the inferior feudal barons were alone inter- 
ested, but which were no less murderous and ruinous for the 
peasants. 

War existed everywhere, and especially between seigniorial 
families. Questions of inheritance and of succession, which 
are now settled by civil justice, then usually ended in vio- 
lent conflicts. When the eldest son of the lord, heir- 
presumptive to the fief, reached the age when he was made 
knight, he demanded a certain part of the domain and 
the seigniorial revenues, as he needed money for his pleas- 
ures, his friends, or for his appearance in tournaments. 
Sometimes he even demanded a formal partnership in the 
seigniorial power and the right to use the seal of the seigniory 
to legalize his acts : that is, his participation in the sovereignty 
as co-seignior and co-proprietor while awaiting the whole 
inheritance. There were fathers who consented to advance 
the inheritance, who benevolently gave the young cavalier 
domains, and even associated him with themselves in the 
government of the seigniory ; others gave him money or land, 
but kept their seigniorial rights intact; still others objected 
to increasing their incomes at all and gave nothing. In that 
case the son, egged on by evil counselors, made open war on 
the father, and the whole fief was disturbed for several years. 
In this way is explained the long quarrel between the two 



264 SOCIAL FRANCE 

lords of Beaujolais — Humbert III, the father, and Humbert 
IV, the son — at the end of the reign of Louis VII and at the 
beginning of that of Philip Augustus. We do not know the 
details of this family war; we only know from the arbitral 
act of the archbishop of Lyons, which terminated it in 1184, 
how great was the desolation in the country of Beaujolais and 
Lyonnais. Here are the expressions employed by the 
arbitrator : 

"Among all the misfortunes which have struck our region, one 
must place first that tempest {tempestas ilia), that pitiless war 
which Humbert of Beaujeu and his son waged against each other, 
and which men almost despaired of ever seeing ended." 

In 1184, however, the belligerents decided to swear, by the 
relics at Lyons, to keep the peace. And then, says the charter : 

" The father received his son like his natural heir, and as the 
legitimate seignior after him of his whole fief and domain of Beaujeu, 
and he swore to this before all the witnesses. The son, in his turn, 
did him homage. And it was in this way that, through our media- 
tion, the young Humbert gave back to his father the greater part 
of the seigniory on which he had laid his hand." 

The heir, then, had almost entirely despoiled the father of 
his fief. 

In the chronicle of Lambert of Ardres, dedicated to the 
history of the petty seigniories of Guines and of Ardres, in 
Artois, we learn that Arnoul, son of Baldwin II, count of 
Guines, received the sword of knighthood in 1181. He was 
hardly in possession of his title before he began to claim the 
inheritance : 

"Amoul had a counselor, Philip of Montgardin, whom he kept 
in spite of the wishes of his father, the count of Guines. This 
counselor steadily urged the young man to claim the city of Ardres 
and the property which had come to him from his mother. There 
were long conferences and frequent interviews between the father 
and the son on this subject. The count of Guines was not satisfied 
with the attitude of his son; the intervention of Philip of Alsace, 
count of Flanders, was necessary to appease him; finally after long 
negotiations young Arnoul obtained Ardres and Colvide, but with 
only a part of their dependencies." 



THE NOBLE AT WAR 265 

Here the difference between the father and the son, between 
the owner of the fief and the presumptive heir, does not seem 
to have resulted in war; at least, the chronicler does not say 
so; but evidently very little was lacking. Defiance of the 
heir by the holder of the seigniory was then a general rule 
in all stages of feudal society. It is well known how Henry 
II, the mighty master of the Plantagenet empire, acted toward 
his eldest son, Henry the Young, and also toward Richard 
the Lion-Hearted. It is also a matter of common knowledge 
that PhiKp Augustus was not even willing to give his son, 
Louis — the future Louis VIII, who was a model son— the 
sovereignty of Artois, which the heir-apparent held in his 
own right from his mother. Louis never bore the title of 
count or of seignior of Artois; he had no chancellery of his 
own; his charters were countersigned by his father's officers. 
Always jealous of his authority, Philip Augustus, to the 
end of his life, closely watched and restrained this son, who 
was more than thirty-five years old when he became king. 
" My son, you have never caused me any trouble," said 
Philip to him on his death-bed. Indeed, the old king had 
taken such precautions that it would have been very hard for 
his heir to cause him much worry. But we have just seen 
that such precautions were necessary, and that young knights, 
rapacious like their fathers, were anxious to speed the day of 
their inheritance. 

Between the sons and their mothers other difficulties arose ; 
for, after the death of the holder of a fief, the heir was 
obliged to leave his widowed mother in possession of a certain 
number of domains and castles, which were thus removed 
from his direct control. It was for this reason that war broke 
out, in 1220, between the widow of Arnoul II, the count of 
Guines, and her son, Baldwin III. It lasted two years; the 
mother and son finally made peace, post multiplices discordias, 
says the chronicle of Ardres, and these three words without 
doubt cover many depredations and murders. 

Brothers did not agree any better, especially when misfor- 
tune decided that they should own a fief or a domain in 
common. This happened in districts where the right of the 
eldest son was not rigorously enforced; and then it was a 
source of interminable wars. Let us go into Limousin, at 



266 SOCIAL FEANCE 

the beginning of the reign of Philip Augustus: two brothers 
were wrangling over the possession of the castle of Haute- 
fort, the ruins of which are still to be seen above the village 
of Bellegarde, in the Dordogne, at the edge of a pond situated 
in the midst of the forest of Bom. This chateau was a re- 
doubtable fortress; but the seigniory of Born, of which it 
was the principal seat, was only of ordinary importance. 
Bertran de Born, the troubadour, and his brother, Constan- 
tine de Born, both residing at Hautefort, seemed to live there 
in harmony at first; then there was discord between them; 
they fought and each tried to expel the other from the pater- 
nal manor. According to Bertran de Born, the entire 
fault lay with his brother, who would not be contented with 
his part: 

"If I have a brother or a eousin-gennain, I divide the egg and 
the money with him, but if he wishes my own part also, then I drive 
him from the community." 

Bertran finally got the upper hand, and Constantine, hav- 
ing been expelled, complained to his suzerains — the visceunt 
of Limoges and Richard the Lion-Hearted, duke of Aquitaine. 
Then, said Bertran, the melee became general and the land 
of Hautefort was ravaged: 

" Each day I fight, I exert myself, I ride, I defend myself, and 
I argue. My land is sacked and is burned. My trees are cut down, 
my grain is mixed with straw, and I have not an enemy, brave or 
cowardly, who does not profit by the occasion to attack me." 

It is not certain that Bertran de Born defended himself 
as well as he says, for the castle of Hautefort, in spite of 
its very strong position, surrendered without striking a blow 
to Richard the Lion-Hearted, who besieged it in 1183. Con- 
stantine de Born entered it; but, a little while later. King 
Henry II made a present of it to the troubadour, who did 
not leave it again. 

The law of primogeniture was a way of avoiding wars 
between brothers; and the barons made the surer of it by 
vowing their younger sons from infancy to an ecclesiastical 
career. But when the rights of inheritance were not entirely 



THE NOBLE AT WAE 267 

clear, when there remained only distant relatives or women 
to succeed to the fiefs, when different principles of heredity 
conflicted, — such as the principle of the succession of progeni- 
tors, of relatives, or that of representation, — ^then competition 
came into play and wars of succession broke out. These quar- 
rels about inheritance occurred in many parts of feudal 
France at the time with which we are occupied ; but the most 
celebrated, the longest, and the most disastrous of all in- 
volved the county of Champagne, which was claimed both by 
Erard of Brienne and by Blanche, countess of Champagne, 
for her minor son, Thibaud IV. It lasted fourteen years, 
from 1213 to 1227; the hostilities which resulted from it 
affected not only Champagne, but also a part of Burgundy, 
the lie de France, and Lorraine ; the pope, the king of France, 
the emperor, and many French, Belgian, and German barons 
were involved in it. It gave rise not only to a number of 
skirmishes and local raids, but to two considerable bat- 
tles. It resulted in diplomatic negotiations of extraordinary 
complication and interminable processes before all possible 
jurisdictions. Finally, it completely subverted feudal rela- 
tionships; vassals changed from one party to another, as 
they found it to their interest, and changed their homage 
and their suzerain with a truly remarkable freedom. This 
typical letter sent by a baron to Blanche, countess of Cham- 
pagne, is enough to illustrate: 

" To Blanche, countess, and to Thibaud, her son, greetings. I, 
seignior of Sexfontaines, let you know by these letters that I was 
formerly your man and that of Thibaud, your son. But now there 
has just appeared an heir who has better founded rights and who 
asks my homage, and there is already a lien between us that will 
prevent me from ever leaving him. Know then, that I have joined 
the side of the legitimate heir and that I am no longer your vassal." 

This was what the famous law of feudal vassalage was in 
practice — the keystone of the whole system of fiefs, of that 
monarchical edifice which seemed so regularly and so har- 
moniously ordered in the theories of the jurists of the thir- 
teenth century. In fact, this bond of vassalage was de- 
plorably fragile and inconstant; it vanished at the slightest 
excuse ; the merest shadow of a claim, a gift of land, a hint of 



268 SOCIAL FRANCE 

money was enough to cause a vassal to change his sovereign 
and to transfer his homage and his personal services to an- 
other seignior. v 

To wars between relatives, therefore, were added wars 
between sovereigns and vassals, which were no less disas- 
trous and no less frequent. It would be impossible to enu- 
merate them ; they fill the history of France ; for contentions 
over vassalage were the very basis of the wars of Philip 
Augustus with the Plantagenets and the counts of Flanders ; 
and of the Plantagenets themselves with the barons of their 
continental domains. They also fill the provincial histories, 
for at that time there was not a single part of France that 
was not the scene of a war waged by a vassal, or by a league 
of vassals against the sovereign of the fief. These conflicts 
and these wars were, so to speak, the woof of all seigniorial 
existence. There are so many facts to relate, so many ex- 
amples to give, that it is useless to collect evidence or to lay 
stress on what constituted the daily and normal life of our 
barons. We must not be deceived by appearances; at bot- 
tom, the sovereign was the enemy of his vassals: he was 
respected when he was strong; he was defied and attacked 
when he was not. On his side, the sovereign was not more 
respectful of the feudal bond. Here is a pertinent anecdote 
taken from the book of the Dominican, Stephen of Bourbon : 



" There was in the diocese of Macon, about the year 1190, a certain 
viscount, who had several castles or donjons. Relying on his 
fortresses, he watched for opportunities to rob rich travelers and 
he lived on the plunder of his men. One day, however, perhaps 
through fear of the king of France, perhaps through personal con- 
viction, he undertook a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and confided 
his land and his castles to his overlord, Girard, count of Macon. 
The latter promised to marry the viscount's daughter to his own son 
William, already associated with the count of Macon. But, far 
from keeping his oath, he kept the land of his vassal for himself, 
and gave the daughter to one of his knights. In vain the heirs 
of the viscount appealed to the king: he refused to hear them." 



As to the viscount himself, despoiled of everything, he 
died of misery and of hunger when he was about to embark 
at Genoa. Here the suzerain was no better than the vassal, 



THE NOBLE AT WAR 269 

and the disloyalty of the first was on a par with the immo- 
rality of the second. 

We have not enumerated all the different kinds of wars in 
discussing this endemic malady of the feudal body. There 
were also the wars of lords against their own officers, the 
agents of the seigniory. The word agent brings up in our 
minds the idea of a more or less zealous but faithful and 
obedient person, attached by his own interests to the suc- 
cess of the state which employs him. It was otherwise in the 
middle ages. The seigniorial officer was himself a petty lord, 
as anxious for land and money as his seignior and striving 
in all ways for independence. We have noticed that Jacques 
of Vitry described the feudal agent as a leech, whom the mas- 
ter must from time to time compel to disgorge — a difficult 
operation and one that often required force. History shows 
that the preacher did not overstate the facts. Let us see 
what happened in 1203 in the county of Boulogne. The 
seneschal of Renaud, count of Dammartin, was a certain 
Eustache le Moine, an adventurer who had a most singular 
destiny. The count was informed that the seneschal was 
appropriating the taxes collected from the land which he 
administered. He summoned Eustache to render his ac- 
counts. Fearing that he would be thrown into prison, 
Eustache took refuge in the great forest of Boulogne. Renaud 
confiscated the possessions of his agent and burned his do- 
mains. On the day that the count was celebrating the mar- 
riage of one of his favorites, Eustache avenged himself by 
burning two of the count's mills, in honor of the event. The 
bloody war between the seneschal and his lord dragged on. 
Eustache stole his lord's horses and maimed his men. One 
day he was taken, and thrown into prison, but escaped and, 
crossing the channel, offered his services to John Lackland 
and to the English. 

Finally, — for we must make an end, even though the mate- 
rial is inexhaustible, — war between nobles was not always 
caused by the hope of gain. With passionate and extremely 
susceptible temperaments, with men who had brutality in 
the blood and choler in their florid complexions, it needed 
only a trifle, a gesture, a word, a bit of mockery to provoke 
hostilities and an interminable vendetta. The assembly of 



270 SOCIAL FRANCE 

barons in the army or in the court of the sovereign was a 
particularly fruitful source of disputes, which were often 
grave and were followed by bloody quarrels after the barons 
had returned to their fiefs. In the epic Qarin le Lorrain 
there is a very vivid picture of the struggle which took place 
between the barons at the court of the king, in the presence 
of the king himself. The knights of the two parties of Lor- 
raine and Bordeaux abused each other, in spite of the inter- 
vention of their sovereign, and, after having heaped each 
other with the most abominable insults, they came to blows. 

" Garin struck Fromont on the head ; so mighty was his fist that 
Fromont, stunned, measured his full length on the floor. Then 
the Bordelais left their seats and came to aid their seignior. The 
melee became general: men seized each other by the hair, they 
fought with their feet, their fists, and their teeth, all in the sight 
of the king, to whom no one v.ould listen. But, in the midst of 
the severest fighting, Coimt Hardre went out, down the stairs, and 
ran to his inn. He took from the head of his bed a strong stick 
of oak, came back to the palace, closed all the exits, and reappeared 
before the Lorrains, who stood rigid with fear. Fourteen knights 
fell mortally wounded." 

Hernais of Orleans, of the Lorrain party, came on the 
scene and, in turn, fell on the Bordelais. 

" There was then a real butchery. The knights, vying with each 
other, set upon the Bordelais, who were soon mutilated and cut to 
pieces. The wounded hid under the tables, in the vain hope of 
escaping; they were found, drawn out of their hiding places, and 
kiUed." 

And this fray at the court of the king was the beginning 
of the war between the Bordelais and the Lorrains, of which 
the epic tells us so many incidents. 

Evidently, the imagination of the minstrel here had free 
play; but, on the whole, he only enlarged and blackened his- 
toric fact. In 1197, the court of Philip Augustus was held 
at Compiegne. A discussion arose between Renaud of Dam- 
martin, count of Boulogne, and Hugh, count of Saint-Pol. 
Hot words were exchanged : Hugh of Saint-Pol struck Renaud 
full in the face, so hard that the blood flowed. Renaud drew 
his dagger and flung himself on his assailant. The king and 



THE NOBLE AT WAR 271 

the bystanders interfered in time ; but the count of Boulogne 
bitterly reproached Philip Augustus for not allowing him to 
avenge himself, and this was one of the grievances which led 
him to ally himself for the first time with the enemies of the 
king of France. 



If the members of the feudal caste fought much among 
themselves, they were not any more at peace with the other 
elements of society. Internal wars were numerous; external 
wars were not less frequent. In the middle ages social dis- 
tinctions were more clean-cut, and class feeling was much 
stronger and more persistent than in modem times. This 
was, on the one hand, because passions were then more in- 
tense and customs more brutal; and, on the other hand, be- 
cause the various social groups were separated by barriers 
which were higher and more difficult to overcome. 

The noble had an untamable antipathy and profound con- 
tempt for the villein: that is (using the word in its most 
comprehensive meaning), for the serf, peasant, the laborer, 
and the citizen or burgher. It would be easy to cite a 
hundred passages of the chansons de geste, written at the 
time of Philip Augustus, in which this contempt is very 
clearly expressed. In these songs villeins who had succeeded 
in emerging from their status, entering the military class, 
and reaching knighthood are sometimes mentioned; but, in 
such a case, the poet never fails to put strong protests into 
the mouths of his noble characters. It is true that in real 
life this transformation from villein to knight did several 
times occur, especially in southern France, where the gulf 
between the classes was narrower; but, on the whole, the 
occurrence was rare. The noble considered the villein — 
whether he was isolated, in a state of servitude, or part of a 
community of more or less free citizens — as an inferior be- 
ing, whom he could despoil and massacre without scruple. 
In this light, certain incidents of the war against the Al- 
bigenses are very instructive. It was not only religious pas- 
sion which animated the knights of the crusade against the 
citizens infected with heresy: it was also the contemptuous 
repulsion that these nobles of the north felt for the villein. 



272 SOCIAL FEANCE 

who in their eyes had no value. This, for example, explains 
the horrors of the sack of Marmande in 1218. " The cru- 
saders," says the historian of Philip Augustus, " killed all 
the citizens with their wives and little children, and all the 
inhabitants to the number of five thousand." But they 
spared the count of Astarac, who had directed the defense 
of the city, and all the nobles who had participated in it. 
If the noble hated the peasant and crushed him without 
mercy, the latter, when he could, repaid in kind. The same 
year, 1218, William of Baux, prince of Orange, fell into the 
hands of the inhabitants of Avignon, who were friendly to 
the Albigenses: the citizens flayed him alive, then cut his 
body into pieces. 

One would think that relations between nobles and church- 
men were less strained. Feudalism furnished a part of 
the personnel of the church: many abbots, canons, and bish- 
ops belonged to seigniorial families; a number of prelates, 
as we have seen, led a noble's life, the life of the castle, and 
went to the chase and to war surrounded by knights and 
armed men. The feudal classes and the clerics, as a whole, 
constituted the privileged class, the proprietors of the soil. 
Between the nobles and the clergy, or better between the 
lay seigniors and the church seigniors, there was this in 
common — that they exploited the lower classes, often by the 
same tyrannical and odious processes. But not only did they 
not agree, but they were continuously at war. The antagonism 
between the nobles and the clergy at this period (and 
one may say at all periods of the middle ages) is, indeed, one 
of the most ordinary, most salient, and best proved facts of 
social history. As a proprietor and as a sovereign, feudalism 
was jealous of the cleric ; it disputed his rights, his revenues, 
his tithes, his patronage of parishes ; it coveted the property 
and the capital accumulated by him through the piety of 
the faithful. Needy and wasteful, it disliked this spiritual 
power which competed with it for property, for power, and 
for money, and which enriched itself without limit; because 
the church always amassed, and never or rarely surrendered 
anything. Barons considered church property as an inex- 
haustible source of booty; they spent their lives in pillaging 
the territory of monks, of canons, and of bishops, or at 



THE NOBLE AT WAR 273 

least of those who did not defend themselves or who defended 
themselves poorly. The spiritual lord protected church goods 
as well as he could by appeal to pope, king, or duke; by 
excommunication, and by arms. There was not a corner of 
France where the nobles and clerics were not in disagreement. 
In brief, the clergy was always a tempting prey to the no- 
bility; it was the competitor, it was the enemy. 

In this last expression there is no exaggeration. This 
statement finds its proof in the general impression as well as 
in the details given by history ; in the countless facts coming 
from every single province of France. And it is completely 
corroborated by a study of the works of Latin and vernacu- 
lar literature, of the writings of preachers and religious 
moralists, as well as of the ballads written by the minstrels for 
the amusement of knights and ladies. 

Let us first ask what the church thought and said about 
feudalism. She was hostile to it for two principal reasons: 
first, because she stood for peace and public order, and the 
nobles stood for just the opposite thing; and then especially 
because she was the continual victim of their aggressions and 
depredations. Out of a sense of duty, she supported the weak 
against them, but, out of self-interest, she defended herself, 
her rights, and her continually threatened properties and 
treasures. And this is enough to explain the bitterness and 
the violence of certain utterances of the clergy. 

Archdeacon Peter of Blois, a wit of the time of Henry II 
and of Philip Augustus, uttered a stinging tirade against 
the feudalism and the military class of his day. It would 
seem that no priest ever spoke worse of a soldier. One of 
his letters w^s addressed to a friend, an archdeacon, whose 
nephews, who were knights, had expressed themselves inso- 
lently about the clergy. " I cannot," wrote Peter to his 
correspondent, ** suffer the boastful self-esteem of your 
nephews, ' ' 

" These young men dare to boast of the superiority of the 
military over the ecclesiastical state, libeling us, by comparing our 
manner of Living and acting with theirs. Admitting that our pro- 
fession is in decadence, theirs is not for that reason more elevated. 
They do not know what knights and chivalry mean; otherwise they 
would kiss the earth before the clergy, they would apply to their 



274 * SOCIAL FRANCE 

impertinent language the restraint which is proper for their age. 
The knighthood of to-day! Why, it consists of disorderly living! 
In these military circles, who is it that is reputed the strongest and 
the most worthy of esteem? It is he who says the most abominable 
things, who swears the most violently, who treats the ministers of 
God the worst, and who respects the church the least. . . . Since your 
nephews have adopted the profession of their companions in arms, 
they have also acquired their detestable habits. . . . What has be- 
come of military art, so well taught by Vegece and so many others'? 
It no longer exists: it is the art of giving oneself up to all sorts 
of excesses and of leading a sottish life. Formerly the soldiers 
swore to defend the state, to stand firm in the field of battle, and 
to sacrifice their lives for the public interest; to-day our knights 
receive their swords from the hand of the priest, and thus declare 
that they are the sons of the church, that their arms serve to defend 
the priesthood, to protect the poor, to pursue malefactors, and to 
save their country. But in reality they do just the opposite: they 
have hardly donned the baldric before they rise against the anointed 
of the Lord, and throw themselves on the patrimony of the Crucified, 
They despoil and ransom the subjects of the church; they crush 
the miserable with unequaled cruelty; they seek the satisfaction 
of their illicit appetites and their extraordinary desires in the pain 
of others. Saint Luke tells us that the soldiers came to Saint John 
the Baptist and asked him this question : ' Master, and we, what 
shall we do ? The saint replied : * Respect the goods of others, do 
not harm your neighbors, and be content with your pay.' Our 
soldiers, who ought to employ their strength against the enemies 
of the cross and of Christ, use it to vie with each other in debauchery 
and drunkenness; they waste their time in sloth; they starve in 
gross intemperance; by their degenerate and impure lives they dis- 
honor their name and their profession." 

We cannot quote all of this letter because, according to 
the custom of the time, Peter of Blois in every line drifts 
into quotations from the Bible and profane literature. With 
a great backing of texts, he recalls what the Roman soldier 
was — his sobriety, his endurance, his love of work ; and the 
comparison with the knight of his period was not to the 
advantage of the latter. The satire grows ever more bitter 
and more stinging: 

" To-day our warriors are reared in luxury. See them leave for 
the campaign; are their packs filled with iron, with lances and 
swords f No! but with leathern bottles of wine, with cheeses and 
spits for roasting. One would suppose that they were going to 
picnic, and not to fight. They carry splendid plated shields, which 



THE NOBLE AT WAR 275 

they greatly hope to bring back unused. On their armor and on 
their saddles are pictured scenes of battle; these are sufficient for 
them: they have no desire to see more." 

To our archdeacon the knights were not even brave; they 
only had courage against defenseless men, and especially 
against clerics. That was especially why Peter of Blois was 
incensed at them. 

" Oh, they are ever ready to take our tithes away from us, to 
despise the church and the clergy, to mock at excommunication, 
to defy God, to persecute priests, to despoil the church of what the 
liberality of their fathers has given her! They forget that God 
said to his priests : ' He that despiseth you despiseth Me, and he 
who toucheth you toueheth the apple of Mine eye.' " 

This is the real feeling of churchmen toward feudalism. 
They did not spare the barons in their sermons. From the 
pulpit they told them some very plain truths. In a sermon 
addressed to the nobles, Jacques of Vitry strongly reproached 
them for their conduct toward clerics. First he condemned 
the indifference of the nobles to religious services: 

"Formerly, they eagerly came and devoutly heard the word of 
God. To-day, there are few of them who deign to come to listen 
to the preacher, who care to sit at the feet of the spiritual doctors 
with the poor and the humble. They only have one idea, that is 
to hurry the cure and to urge him to finish his mass. When it is 
finished, they hasten to the material table, where they eat and 
drink. There they stay a long time without wearying. Oh! indeed, 
they do not sleep there, though they sleep or dream in the church 
at the spiritual table, which bores them." 

Jacques of Vitry had a theory about the social classes and 
their respective functions. To him, the world was a vast 
body, all of whose members were subordinated to a common 
end. The clerics and the prelates were the eyes of this body, 
for it was they who taught men the way of safety, who 
pointed it out, and who served as guides. The barons and 
the knights were its hands and arms: God ordered them to 
defend the goods of the church, to protect the weak, to pre- 
vent the poor from being oppressed and despoiled; they 
should promote peace and justice and oppose violence. That 



276 SOCIAL FRANCE 

is what they were for; and Providence gave them revenues 
so that they would not surrender their subjects to exaction 
and rapine. Finally, the common people (minores), the or- 
dinary laymen, were the base of the social body, for they 
formed the lower parts of it; their function was to sustain 
and keep the eyes and the hands in good condition by their 
work. But the order of the knights did not at all fulfil its 
earthly function. These hands of the social body were, like 
the hands of a raving maniac, busy in plucking out the eyes 
and crushing the feet. Instead of defending the poor, the 
nobles despoiled and oppressed them; instead of protecting 
the church, they persecuted and attacked it. 

Exasperated by the daily outrages of the nobles, the clerics 
were provoked to say audacious and even absurd things. In 
a manuscript of the Bibliotheque Nationale, Haureau,^ in 
1886, found a treatise on canonical jurisprudence written by 
a cleric of the time of Philip Augustus. He thinks this cleric 
was an English canon, Robert of Courcon, who later became 
a cardinal and legate of Innocent III. Whoever he was, the 
author of this unpublished treatise was a very radical spirit, 
who condemned many abuses, notably the church's policy 
of receiving gifts from all hands without inquiring how the 
fortune given by the donors was acquired; he even opposed 
the acceptance of gifts from repentant sinners. He, too, had 
a social theory, or rather a socialistic theory, quite surprising 
for the middle ages. He wanted to rid society of all who did 
not work; not only of , all the idle nobles who lived on their 
incomes or by brigandage, but even of all the citizens who 
were capitalists: that is, who practised usury, which in the 
middle ages meant financial or banking operations. There 
follows a literal translation of the passage in which he ad- 
vances this curious theory. 

" The evil from which we are suffering cannot disappear unless 
the following measures are taken : there should be convoked a 
general assembly of all bishops and all sovereigns under the presi- 
dency of the pope; and then all the prelates and all the princes 
should ordain, under pain of excommunication and civil condenma- 

^ Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Biil. nat., XXXI, part 2, 
p. 261. 



THE NOBLE AT WAE 277 

tion, that each person be forced to work either spiritually or manu- 
ally, so that no one may eat bread not gained by his labor, according 
to the words of the apostle: 'If any shall not work, neither shall 
he eat.' As a result, there would be no more idlers among us. 
Thus usurers and brigands would disappear." 

Who would then remain in this Christian world? Only 
priests and workingmen, living on the wage of their spiritual 
or manual labors. " No one," says Haureau, " in any place 
or in any book has ever written or uttered anything more 
extreme or more absurd." This is a waste of indignation. 
We have in the passage the bizarre revery of an ecclesiastic, 
of a man who desired more justice in the world, who disliked 
the bankers because the church at that time condemned bank- 
ing and its profits, and who also detested lazy and malicious 
feudalism : that is, the nobles whom he characterized as brig- 
ands, raptores. This word well summarizes the attitude of 
the church, the principal victim of these excesses. 



It would be interesting to learn what feudalism, in its turn, 
thought and said of the clergy. But this is much more diffi- 
cult. The nobles hardly ever wrote, and for a good reason. 
Not the feudal, but the ecclesiastical records, the chronicles of 
monks, have come down to us from that time. Therefore, 
we cannot ascertain at first hand anything but the opinion 
of clerics; which we find expressed in their correspondence, 
their sermons, and their literary works. The opinion of the 
feudal classes must be discovered indirectly. 

In the first place, it may perhaps be deduced from their 
conduct towards the clergy. We have said, and we will 
show, that the barons spent their lives in pillaging ecclesias- 
tical domains and waging ruthless wars against abbeys, chap- 
ters, and bishoprics, in which the person of the cleric was 
not much more respected than his property. They willingly 
confiscated religious treasures and did not hesitate to burn 
churches and cloisters, though they were ready to do penance 
afterwards. It is hard to believe that such men had any 
real consideration or sympathy for priests and monks. To 
be sure, religious sentiment was not wholly lacking among 
the soldiers; it manifested itself in the habits of the class, 



278 SOCIAL FRANCE 

in superstition concerning relics, in the founding of abbeys, 
in pilgrimages to sanctuaries, and iu the hatred of heretics. 
But, among the nobles, religious sentiment appeared especially 
at the time of sickness or at the approach of death : theirs was 
a religion of remorse and fear, an intermittent religion, quite 
compatible with their lack of respect for holy things and 
sacred persons in ordiuary times. 

In the absence of records left by the nobles themselves, it 
is only in the baUads that their real opinions can be found. 
"Written as they were for the nobility, these epics pictured 
the life and expressed the feeling of the noble. The author 
of an epic saw all things with the eyes of the soldier, who 
profoundly despised everything that was not military, who 
comprehended and prized nothing but martial pursuits and 
the turbulent life of camps or castles. In a word, it is the 
feudal spirit more or less exaggerated that dominates and 
animates the ballads — a spirit of brutality and of violence, 
hostile to the peasant, insolent and rebellious to the king, 
contemptuous of the clergy. 

For this incontestable fact must be noted that, in works 
like Garin le Lorrain or Girart de Boussillon, the church — 
that great power of the middle ages — played an inferior and 
incidental role. Clerics and monks were useful only as chap- 
lains or secretaries to the barons, whose letters they read and 
wrote, or as reserves — to pick up the dead on the battlefield, 
to bandage the wounded, and to say masses for those who 
paid. The knights employed clerics, especially monks, but 
held them in low esteem. Odilon, one of the heroes of the 
lay Girart, haranguing his warriors, told them that, " if 
he found a coward among them, he would make him a monk 
in a monastery." In the lay Hervis de Metz, a knight cries 
out : ' ' All these fat monks, all these canons, all these priests, 
and all these abbots ought to be soldiers. Oh, if the king 
would only give them to me ! " It was not rare for the poet 
to represent the monk performing a disagreeable duty. In 
Garin le Lorrain and in Girart, the monk frequently acted as 
messenger, a trying and sometimes dangerous task. 

One day, Girart of Roussillon, attempting to appease the 
wrath of King Charles Martel, his enemy, sent the prior 
of Saint-Sauveur as his ambassador. " Monk," said Girart 



THE NOBLE AT WAR . 279 

to his messenger, " go find King Charles Martel, and 
humbly ask him to give me his confidence and friendship." 
The monk hastened to deliver the message. " Never until 
that moment was he so terrified." He came into the pres- 
ence of the king, who asked him his name. 

" ' Sire, I am Friar Bourmon. Girart, your vassal, sent me.' — 
'How dared you come hither?' — 'Sire, Girart sent me from afar. 
He will eome to pay you full homage, according to the decision of 
your men and your barons, provided you will grant him a hearing.' 
'His homage! What do I care about that?' said Charles. 'I 
will not leave him a handful of earth, and as for you. Monk, who 
brought this message, I wonder what shameful treatment I can 
inflict on you.' The monk, when he heard these words, would 
fain have been far away. ' It was not by his strength,' continued 
the king, ' that Girart defeated me, for had I not been surprised, 
he would have been captured or killed; no place of refuge, however 
strong, whether town, citadel, or castle, would have saved him any 
more than a simple shepherd's hut. But it is you, Sir Monk, who 
shall pay for this. I will . . .'" 

We do not know how to put the threat Charles Martel 
uttered. The poet adds, as a sort of refrain, " and the monk, 
when he heard these words, would fain have been far away. ' ' 
When he saw that Charles was wroth and when he heard 
the threats, he feared for his safety. Hardly would he have 
continued his mission had Charles been sorry for his words; 
therefore, as a sagacious man, he asked leave, in God's name, 
to retire: " I want," he said, "to go back to my master." 
" Monk," said the king, " I swear, by Jesus above, that, if 
I had Girart of Roussillon, I would hang him like a thief 
from the eaves of my house." And the messenger, hearing 
these words, did not say him nay, but would fain have been 
far away. ' ' Monk, how dared you come hither ? You would 
have done better to remain in your monastery saying mass, 
or in your cloister reading your book, praying for the dead 
or serving God, than to have brought me this message from 
Girart. If it were not for the fear of God and eternal death, 
I would have a mind to ... " A new threat followed. 
The monk, hearing speech of this sort, knew not what to say, 
but took his servant by the hand and departed ; and, having 
mounted his animal, he set out without once looking back. 



280 SOCIAL FRANCE 

He did not stop until he had reached Girart. The count 
asked him what he had accomplished. * ' Do not detain me ! " 
cried the monk. " I am overwrought. I am going at once 
to the monastery to ring the bell; then I shall say a Te 
Deum and a prayer to Saint Thomas for his mercy in saving 
me from the hands of Charles Martel. You can arrange mat- 
ters as you please with him ; but you shall never again have 
me as your messenger." 

In Oarin, one of the barons sent two monks to the court of 
the king: he had bribed them to swear falsely, and one of 
these unfortunate clerics was half-killed by a knight of the 
opposite party. In this instance the monk was not only 
ridiculous: he was odious. 

The bards treated the archbishops and the bishops with 
more consideration, because they were great lords and formed 
a part of the feudal hierarchy. However, in the lay Hervis 
de Metz, the episcopacy is represented as egotistical, grasping, 
miserly, and unwilling to contribute to the expense of the 
defense of the kingdom. When the king asked the archbishop 
of Reims, the highest ecclesiastical personage in France, to 
contribute money for the war against the Saracens, the prel- 
ate declared that he would not give a denier. Then one of 
the barons cried out : ' ' We want other words than these. In 
Gaul, there are twenty thousand knights whose fireplaces and 
mills are held by the clerics. Let them remember that, or, 
by the Lord God, things shall take a different turn." But 
the archbishop persisted in his refusal. " We are clerics," 
he said; " our duty is to serve God. We will pray to 
Him to give you victory and guard you from death. And, 
as for you, knights, God commanded you to aid the clerics 
and to aid Holy Church. Why so many words ? I swear by 
the great Saint Denis that you shall not have an Angevin 
sou. ' ' 

As to the head of the church, the pope, it was indeed not 
to be expected that an epic written by the contemporaries of 
Philip Augustus would leave out a personage who at that 
period dominated the entire world and commanded kings as 
well as the humblest of the faithful. Therefore, the pope 
has his place in the lays, but an unimportant one, very dif- 
ferent from the position he really held in history. He did 



THE NOBLE AT WAR 281 

not even possess Rome ; he was hardly a sovereign, but rather 
a person of secondary importance, who appeared in the suite 
of the emperor or of the king of France, whose chief chap- 
lain he would seem to have been. Note these first verses of 
Girart: *' It was Pentecost, in the gay springtime. Charles 
was holding his court at Reims. Many open-hearted persons 
were present. The pope was there and preached. ' ' Later the 
pope, as an ordinary bishop, went as one of the embassy that 
Charles Martel sent to Constantinople. To be sure, the poet 
ascribed to him a moral authority over bishops and barons; 
he made him the chief counselor of the king of France : " He 
was a churchman who knew much, and spoke wisely and to 
the point." In Garin, the pope stood for peace and tried, 
with small success to be sure, to calm feudal passions by 
reminding the barons that their first duty was to make peace 
among themselves and to march against the enemies of their 
faith. This all contains something of historical fact ; but, on 
the whole, it is certain that the literature of chivalry lessens 
and at pleasure effaces the religious sovereign who dominated 
the middle ages. 

On the whole, the feudal class despised the priest, as peace- 
ful and lazy; it relegated him to the church, there to preach 
virtues contrary to those he practised. Besides, the noble 
envied the wealth of the church and considered himself 
robbed of all that was given to the church. The author of 
Hervis de Metz very naively and bluntly says as much at the 
beginning of his poem: 



" To-day when a man falls ill, and lies down to die, he does not 
think of his sons, or of his nephews, or of his cousins; he 
summons the Black Monks of Saint Benedict, and gives them all 
his lands, his revenues, his ovens, and his mills. The men of this 
age are impoverished, and the clerics are daily becoming richer." 



But the nobles and the clerics did not stop with words. 
Wars between them were so frequent and so common that 
they hold a place of high importance in historical documents. 
If they occupied the attention of the chroniclers to such an 



282 SOCIAL FRANCE 

extent, it is because they were so conspicuous a manifestation 
of the turbulence of medieval life, so evident a form of social 
disorder and of class antipathy. 

There was war between the lay and the ecclesiastical 
seigniors in all provinces and in nearly all cantons. For 
there was not a city in France where the count did not find 
himself at variance with the bishop or the chapter. The 
step from disagreement to violence was not a long one in 
the middle ages; hence, every lord's donjon implied danger 
to the neighboring monastery. From the top to the bottom 
of the feudal system the same disposition appears: the men 
of the castle tried to deprive the men of the church of their 
lands, their revenues, their rights, and their serfs. At any 
rate, they made their living by pillaging ecclesiastical do- 
mains and appropriating treasures accumulated in the sanc- 
tuaries through the devotion of the faithful. 

The hungry and needy noble from the inferior classes of 
feudalism found that the cleric and the monk were tempt- 
ingly rich, and he attacked and despoiled them. The barons 
from the upper ranks complained that their political and 
judicial sovereignty was being appropriated by the tribunals 
of the church and by the temporal power of the clerics ; and, 
accordingly, they attacked the ecclesiastical powers in order 
to prevent their expansion. One should not, however, look 
at these conflicts from so narrow or so mean a point of view 
as to exclude their larger significance. Undeniably, the 
sources show that the seigniors, both great and small, engaged 
very freely in pillaging the lands of the church ; but in the 
conflict between the baron and the bishop, as in the struggles 
between the citizen and the cleric, the first manifestation of 
a lay spirit, the first revolt of the civil power against reli- 
gious authority is to be found. In the lower levels of society 
we have the exploitation by the feudal lord, who forces the 
granary and the cellar of the monks, puts their serfs to ransom, 
steals their cattle, and returns to his castle when his raid is 
complete. In the upper levels, we have the great lords of 
France gathering about Philip Augustus, as they did in the 
year 1205, when they protested as a body against the exag- 
gerated development of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and op- 
posed the political and financial encroachment of the papal 



THE NOBLE AT WAB 283 

power. In each case it is war on the church; to the modem 
world, the second is of greater interest. 

The church knew how to defend herself against all kinds 
of attacks. One need not believe, because of the complaints 
of preachers like Jacques of Vitry, that the church was al- 
ways an unresisting and resigned victim. She defended her- 
self from feudal violence by her temporal power, by appeal- 
ing to the king or the pope for aid, or by excommunication. 
At the beginning of the thirteenth century this weapon of 
excommunication was not as dulled as some have been wont 
to say. To be sure, the seigniors of that time took excommu- 
nication and interdict more lightly than ever before; they 
had become accustomed to them and could resist for a period 
before yielding. But we know from many narratives that in 
the end they were often compelled to make honorable repara- 
tion. In this epoch, when faith was still intense, a baron 
could at a pinch endure a personal excommunication; it was 
more difficult for him to force his subjects to submit to an 
interdict. 

If he became accustomed to these censures, the church was 
in a measure responsible, for she had multiplied them beyond 
all bounds. Not only did churchmen in their internal quar- 
rels excommunicate each other without adequate reason, but, 
on the pretext of defending themselves against laymen, they 
most grievously abused this weapon. Taking the seigniors 
of the time of Philip Augustus for any given date or any 
one year, one would find surprisingly few of them who were 
not, or had not been, censured with interdict or excommuni- 
cation. To demonstrate this, it is sufficient to run through the 
chronicles, the correspondence — especially that of the pope, — 
and the cartularies of bishoprics and abbeys: the barons who 
are mentioned are excommunicated or their lands are inter- 
dicted. The list of them would be interminable: it would 
contain very nearly all the seigniors of France, not 
excepting the king, the dukes, or the sovereign counts. This 
proves, in the first place, that the misdeeds and aggressions 
of feudalism were innumerable ; it also proves that the church 
punished too readily and too lightly. The popes themselves 
were obliged to recognize this and to urge ecclesiastics to 
exercise^ greater moderation. 



284 SOCIAL FRANCE 

We will illustrate this by a single example. There is 
no doubt that the counts of Champagne, at the end of the 
twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth century, were among 
the great barons who maintained the best order in their 
seigniory and showed the greatest respect for the church, 
its officers, and its goods. Blanche, countess of Navarre, and 
her son, Thibaud IV, who was for a long time held in tute- 
lage, were neither persecutors nor pillagers. But we know 
of at least seven sentences of excommunication or interdict 
laid on them by the bishops of Champagne. If the seigniorial 
officers so much as seized the goods of a subject of an abbey 
or of a chapter, a censure was sure to fall on the countess. 
Things went so far that Innocent III had to ask several bish- 
ops of Champagne to be more restrained in pronouncing 
anathemas against the sovereigns of the fief and their sub- 
jects, and in laying interdicts on their cities and towns. Once 
Honorius III even cancelled a sentence of excommunication 
laid on Countess Blanche by the abbot of Saint-Denis. 

It is clear that there were abuses, but these abuses are 
well explained by the irritation and the exasperation of the 
clerics at the incessant attacks of the nobility. When a count 
and a bishop — that is, two great barons — were involved, the 
contestants could be considered equals. But what could one 
do, and what other weapon besides excommunication could one 
employ, when the aggressor, in a coat of mail, surrounded by 
his band, and inaccessible in his tower, attacked an isolated 
monastery? And this was what occurred every day. It was 
the monk who was the ordinary victim of the small as well 
as of the great feudal captains. War on the monk was one 
of the principal occupations of feudal lords. 

To obtain an inkling of the persistence with which a family 
of castellans, even of the lesser nobility, attacked a neighbor- 
ing monastery, one has only to open a cartulary, such as that 
of the abbey of Saint- Avit, near Orleans. In it one finds that 
the seigniorial house of Boelli, or Boyau (the name is not 
aristocratic), is at variance for several generations with the 
monks of the abbey. In 1183, the monks complained that 
Joscelin Boyau imposed arbitrary taxes on their village of 
Seris and overwhelmed it with outrages. They appealed to 
the bishop of Orleans. The latter could not do much, and he 



THE NOBLE AT WAE 285 

sent them to the lord of the region, Thibaud V, count of 
Blois, who took the people of Seris under his protection — not, 
alas! for nothing, but in consideration of an annual rental 
of two setiers of hay for each house, payable at Blois. In 
the middle ages the miserable peasants had no choice: to 
escape destruction at the hands of the petty lords, they were 
compelled to suffer encroachment at the hands of the great. 
And even then the guarantee was very often illusory. One 
is led to believe that Thibaud 's promise of protection did not 
have much effect, for, in 1198, the tenants of Seris once more 
complained that Foucher and Philip Boyau tried to compel 
them to turn and haul the hay on the seigniorial meadows. 
In 1217, the conflict became more bitter. Hamelin, the head 
of the Boyau family, was then a canon of Mans; despite 
that, he remained a proprietor and a seignior, and was as 
much as ever an enemy of the monks. He claimed that the 
men of Seris were bound to turn the hay on his fields, carry 
it to his granary of Beaugency, convey the trellis for his vines 
to the same place, bring him fuel at Christmas, send him 
annually a goose or three chickens, and pay the taille twice 
a year (an arbitrary procedure already enforced by his an- 
cestor Joseelin), Finally, he claimed the right of high and 
low justice over the village. Unable to defend his men, the 
abbot of Saint- Avit again appealed to the bishop of Orleans, 
who made an agreement with Hamelin Boyau to end hostili- 
ties. Hamelin agreed to abandon all his claims, in considera^- 
tion of the sum of twenty livres in cash. But all the members 
of this terrible family had not subscribed to the agreement. 
There was one, named Renaud, who had laid hands on certain 
properties of the men of Saint- Avit and of the abbey itself, 
and who refused to surrender them. In 1219, he was ex- 
communicated. After five years it became necessary to ag- 
gravate the sentence ; and we still have a letter to this effect, 
sent by the bishop of Orleans to the cures of all the 
parishes of his diocese. '' Every Sunday and feast day," he 
wrote, '' after having rung the bells and lighted the candles, 
you shall denounce the aforementioned Renaud as excom- 
municate and you shall consider as interdicted all those who 
have anything to do with him." Of this long strife between 
the monks of Saint- Avit and the Boyau family we have only 



286 SOCIAL FRANCE 

given the incidents falling within the reign of Philip Augus- 
tus; but it had begun before, and it did not end until long 
after. In the middle ages, trials, conflicts, and wars lasted 
for centuries, and were transmitted, like an inheritance, from 
generation to generation; for, in spite of treaties and truces, 
every one reasserted his claims and no one renounced what 
he considered a right. What was happening in this little 
comer of Beauce in Orleans was taking place wherever a 
seignior and an abbot were rivals, and often the misdeeds 
were more serious. 

In 1187, Raoul, seignior of Chateauroux, assembled a 
strong army, burned the villages of the abbey of Deols, mas- 
sacred the inhabitants, and expelled the monks of Deols from 
several of their priories. Ten years later, Andrew of 
Chauvigny, his successor, was excommunicated for outrages 
against the same abbey. In Bourbonnais, Gui of Dampierre, 
the new lord of Bourbon, persecuted the priory of Saint- 
Pourgain, seized its fiefs and domains, ravaged its leased 
farms, and even went so far as to do violence to the persons 
of the prior and the monks. After him, Archambaud, his son, 
continued to treat the monks as enemies. The abbot of 
Tournus, superior of Saint-Pourgain, found it necessary to 
ask Philip Augustus to intervene. In the region of Reims 
and of Laon the abbeys, such as those of Saint-Martin of 
Laon and of Signy, were literally devoured by a host of 
barons — ^the seigniors of Coucy, Pierrepont, Rozoy, Rumigny, 
Chateau-Porcien, and Rethel. In a document of 1203, Roger 
of Rozoy confesses his mistakes and admits that he had often 
stolen the grain and the cattle of the monks. Sometimes 
the monks resisted, and one day there was a bloody battle 
in the woods between the men of the count of Chateau- 
Porcien and the lay brothers of the abbey of Signy. In 
Champagne, the seigniors of Joinville were at open war with 
the abbeys of Montier-en-Der and of Saint-Urbain ; in 
Provence, the seigniors of Castellane, with the monks of 
Saint- Victor of Marseilles. It was the same in Vendome, 
where the abbots of Trinite had, since the foundation of their 
abbey in the middle of the eleventh century, suffered the 
daily persecutions of the counts of Vendome. Jean I, count 
of Vendome, had forced the monks of Trinite to leave the 



THE NOBLE AT WAR 287 

abbey and to take refuge in one of their priories for fourteen 
months. He was excommunicated. Three years later, one 
fine day in 1180 he was seen entering the monastery bare- 
footed, to beg pardon of the abbot. This was an exact repe- 
tion of a scene which had been enacted a little less than a 
hundred years before, when the grandfather of this very 
Jean, Geoffroi-Jourdain, who also had forced an abbot of 
Vendome into exile, made his peace with the whole chapter. 
And Bouchard, the son and associate of Jean I, count of 
Vendome, rivaled his father in violence, and burdened the 
subjects of the abbey with exactions and unlawful tithes to 
such a degree that Henry II, king of England, believed it 
necessary to compel him to release his victims. Covetous- 
ness of monastic goods was a strong passion among the 
feudal lords, an irrepressible tendency transmitted with the 
blood. 

It is seldom that we possess the details of these conflicts 
or wars between the donjon and the abbey. However, one 
monk, Hugh of Poitiers, was thoughtful enough to relate the 
incidents of the interminable struggle which the celebrated 
abbey of Vezelay carried on against the counts of Nevers, 
its hereditary and indefatigable persecutors: a typical strug- 
gle, which lasted through the whole of the twelfth century, 
and caused the popes, the French bishops, and the kings of 
France to interfere almost every year, without ever com- 
pletely succeeding in disarming the seignior and protecting 
the abbot. Unfortunately, this exceedingly instructive and 
often dramatic history of Hugh of Poitiers ends long before 
the death of Louis VII. For the period of Philip Augustus 
we have only the letters of Innocent III, which are, to be 
sure, detailed enough. One of them describes the relations 
between Herve of Donzy, count of Nevers, and Gautier, 
abbot of Vezelay, in 1211 and 1212; and from it we can 
obtain a good idea of the persistence of feudal enmities and 
the vexations of all kinds to which clerics were exposed. 

The underlying cause of this long conflict was that the 
abbot of Vezelay claimed to be a vassal of the pope, to belong 
solely to the domain of Saint Peter, and to owe no service, 
pecuniary or other, to the count of Nevers. The counts, 
on the other hand, claimed that they were the legal guardians 



288 SOCIAL FRANCE 

and the natural patrons of the abbey, and that, therefore, 
the monks owed them many services, especially that of enter- 
taining them and their knights when they appeared at the 
abbey — in other words, what the people of the middle ages 
called " food and lodging." As soon as Gautier was elected 
abbot in 1207, he had to endure the same exactions and in- 
dignities as his predecessors at the hand of Count Herve of 
Donzy. 

First, Herve claimed that every newly installed abbot of 
Vezelay was in duty bound to pay him an accession fee; 
Gautier refused to recognize this claim but, to appease the 
enemy, like one appeases a dog by tossing him a bone, he 
gave the count a gift of five hundred livres. This did not 
satisfy the count, who found other means of extortion. He 
forced the abbot to pay nine hundred livres to a citizen of 
Bourges, although the monastery was in no wise indebted to 
this individual, under pretext that he, the count, was guar- 
antor of the debt. A Jew, who had been converted and bap- 
tised, had given one hundred livres to the abbey; but later 
he returned to Judaism, as the pope said, " like a dog to his 
vomiting." Herve of Donzy forced the abbot to turn the 
hundred livres of this renegade Jew into the count 's treasury. 
He often sent his officers to seize the beasts of burden, the 
carts, or the subjects of the abbey, and used them to trans- 
port the supplies of his castles. Then, instead of returning 
them without delay, he kept them for three or four weeks. 
He let his agents cut down the forests of the abbot as they 
pleased; he received and protected malefactors who pilfered 
the goods of the monks; he summoned the abbot and the 
monks before his tribunal, although, according to their privi- 
leges, they were not liable to judgment before any lay court. 
Several times he blockaded the roads and paths which led 
to thei abbey, so that the monks could not obtain the water 
and the wood which they needed. At harvest time, he pre- 
vented the servants of the abbey from gathering their grapes 
and selling their crops; and he laid violent hands on the 
carts which carried food, wine, and other necessities to the 
abbey. The abbot finally complained to Philip Augustus, 
who commanded Herve to cease these persecutions. The 
baron was thereafter apparently quiet ; but in fact hostilities 



THE NOBLE AT WAR 289 

continued: for, if the count himself did not attack them, 
he left the field free for all their other enemies. 

Evidence of this is found in the fact that the land of the 
count was open to the coming and going of a band of rob- 
bers, who were one day surprised in one of his villas with 
booty taken from the monks. For some little time these male- 
factors established a sort of blockade around Vezelay, so 
effective that the monks and the servants of the monastery 
could not go out without peril. A vassal of Count Herve, 
named Joscelin, overwhelmed the monks with outrages, and 
seized their horses and everything else that he found worth 
taking; he even went so far as to invade a priory of the 
abbey and appropriate its appurtenances. The abbot com- 
plained to the count; the latter, who with one word could 
have stopped the misdeeds of Joscelin and the other ag- 
gressors, did not see fit to restrain them. On the contrary, 
he himself seized the priory of Dornecy, took the revenues 
for six months, and prevented the monks from collecting the 
tithes. The monks of the priory, having no means of subsist- 
ence, would have abandoned the monastery in a body had not 
the count, yielding to better councils, restored their property. 
On the domain of Ascon, another property of the abbey, John, 
son of the provost, in spite of the opposition of the monks, 
succeeded in acquiring the provostship after his father, thus 
making the office hereditary. Instead of opposing this in- 
justice, the count, in defiance of the prerogatives of the 
church, sanctioned it and commanded the abbot to appear 
before lay judges with the new provost. 

These are the deeds of the count of Nevers which provoked 
the abbot of Vezelay to clamor for justice and reparation. 
The count lent a deaf ear. One day, when the demands 
especially annoyed him, he threatened to throw the prior of 
the monastery and his colleagues into a fish-pond. It was 
finally necessary for half of the monks of the abbey to go to 
Nevers for a definitive interview with the count. They pros- 
trated themselves before him and humbly proffered their 
request. He refused to grant it. Then they begged his coun- 
cilors to urge him to come to some permanent understanding. 
After long negotiations, these replied that the abbey could 
obtain the good-will of the count only on the condition that 



290 SOCIAL FRANCE 

the monks and the citizens of Vezelay pay him the sum 
of a thousand Provins livres (more than one hundred and 
fifty thousand francs). " It will ruin our community! " 
cried the monks. The citizens of Vezelay, overcome at hav- 
ing to pay so great a sum, declared to the abbot that, if he 
did not immediately go to Rome to beg the protection of the 
pope, they would all leave Vezelay and take refuge in the 
towns of the king of France. An urgent appeal was made 
to the bishops, to the archbishops, to the great barons of the 
realm, to the duke of Burgundy, and to Philip Augustus him- 
self. All these persons, by prayer or by menace, insisted that 
the count of Nevers stop persecuting the abbey, make repara- 
tion for the damage inflicted upon it, and take the monks and 
citizens under his protection as he ought. Herve of Donzy 
listened to none of this. 

No longer able to enduro it, the abbot decided to go to 
Rome to appeal to Innocent III. As soon as he was gone, 
the outrages multiplied. It was about vintage-time of 1211. 
The citizens and the monks of Vezelay thought that they 
could finish gathering their grapes in plenty of time. Sud- 
denly the soldiers of the count rushed in, chased the pickers 
from the vineyards, overturned the grapes already picked, 
wounded the servants of the abbey, and took or killed their 
horses. The monastery lost five hundred livres; the citizens 
more than three thousand marks; besides which, the officers 
of Herve wrecked the mill of the provost of the abbey and 
carried away the millstone and the ironwork. 

Philip Augustus, notified anew, seriously threatened the 
count if he went on in this fashion. The count for some 
time thereafter heeded his warning. In passing, we should 
note that the king of France had a price for his intervention : 
all the profit the monks made from their wine went to the 
royal treasury. Finally, Innocent III, too, became active. 
In a letter of November 13, 1211, he commanded the bishop 
of Paris and Robert of Courcon, his legate, to excommunicate 
the count of Nevers and, if need be, lay his dominions under 
an interdict, if the king of France could not, within two 
months, compel the count to sign a treaty of peace with the 
abbey. 

All these details sufficiently show the persistence of the 



THE NOBLE AT WAR 291 

seigniors, their hatred for their victims, and the difficulty 
of inducing them to surrender their prize. Nobody could 
really do anything. The king of France himself only ob- 
tained an ephemeral satisfaction, obedience for a few days. 
The pope entered the lists with his thunders; would he have 
any better fortune? An excommunication coming from the 
head of the church had a particular gravity ; however, it did 
not have any important effect; for Herve of Donzy allowed 
himself to be excommunicated, and he remained excommuni- 
cated to the end of the year 1213. And then it was not the 
excommunication which obliged him to submit and to make 
peace with his enemy, the monastery. To subdue this recalci- 
trant, recourse to another weapon was necessary. The papacy 
had at its command a variety of resources. 

Herve of Donzy, seignior of Gien, had in 1190 become 
count of Nevers by his marriage to Mathilda, heiress of the 
ancient counts. This marriage had been arranged by Philip 
Augustus, who took the castle and city of Gien as his com- 
mission (the word is vulgar, but is very appropriate in this 
instance). Like all barons, Herve had rivals and enemies. 
They discovered that the heiress whom he had married was 
his relative in the fourth degree, and at that time the church 
did not sanction such marriages, unless she had some particu- 
lar reason for tolerating them. In 1205, in consequence of 
a formal protest by the duke of Burgundy, Innocent III or- 
dered an inquiry into the relationship of Herve and Mathilda : 
a pure formality, no doubt, which was without result, for, 
until 1212, no steps were taken toward the dissolution of the 
marriage. But in June, 1212, after the crisis of Vezelay and 
the excommunication of the count of Nevers, Innocent III, 
at just the right time, recollected that he had begun the 
inquiry and ordered it to be resumed. That touched the count 
in a sensitive spot, for, if the marriage was dissolved, the 
heiress would claim her inheritance, the county of Nevers, and 
Herve of Donzy would fall back into the rank of petty 
seigniors. What the pope had foreseen happened: as soon 
as the count's agent in Rome learned that the order of in- 
quiry had been despatched to France, he presented himself 
before Innocent, " troubled by a great grief," says the letter 
of the pope, " and humbly prayed us, giving us all possible 



292 SOCIAL FRANCE 

assurances, that the business of the inquiry be counter- 
manded; and promised, on the part of the count, that the 
abbey of Vezelay should suffer no more persecution." Inno- 
cent III commanded his agent to suspend the inquiry as soon 
as the count of Nevers made peace and gave reasonable satis- 
faction to the monks and to the church. 

The terms of peace were dictated by the pope himself on 
April 12, 1213. He determined that the count of Nevers 
might appear in the monastery of Vezelay only twice a year, 
at Easter and at the feast of Mary Magdalene, and that the 
monks should at those times give him a hundred livres, his 
procuration. The abbot, on his part, was required to re- 
nounce all claims for damages, except for the tithes of 
Dornecy; for these the count was expected to give compensa- 
tion. The sanction of the king of France was also necessary 
to this arrangement. On these conditions only was the count 
of Nevers to be absolved from excommunication. 

Herve of Donzy submitted. But there still remained the 
question which he had most at heart — the validity of his 
marriage. Innocent III kept this sword of Damocles sus- 
pended over Herve 's head for some time. The count wrote the 
pope an urgent letter, in which he protested that his marriage 
had lasted for thirteen years {in conspectu ecclesiae) ; that 
Mathilda had borne him a daughter; and that, finally, the 
pope ought to do him a favor, because he had taken a vow 
to go on a crusade. On December 20, 1213, he secured the 
papal dispensation which declared his marriage forever un- 
assailable. All this was necessary to compel a feudal lord 
to respect an abbey. Yet one cannot positively assert that, 
once the peace was signed and the dispensation obtained, the 
count of Nevers did not again resume his former attitude to- 
ward the monks of Vezelay. 

The temptation was too great and the prey too easy. On 
the whole, the feudal barons did not have much trouble in 
terrorizing and plundering monasteries located in the country 
or surrounded only by an ordinary market-town. It would 
appear more difficult to attack clerics in the cities, but in 
these the barons had the cooperation of the citizens, who were 
also hostile to monks and canons. The cathedral chapters, 
those rich and powerful communities of clerics which lived 



THE NOBLE AT WAR 293 

in closed and fortified cloisters as well as the abbeys, excited 
the cupidity of the laymen. There was, then, a permanent 
and often a lively conflict in cities, because the populace took 
part in it. 

In Chartres, for instance, the chapter of Notre-Dame and 
the count of Chartres were in a perpetual conflict throughout 
the middle ages. The officers of the seignior, backed by the 
citizens, incessantly harassed the canons, and grave incidents 
often occurred. In 1194, the countess of Chartres had one 
of the servants of the chapter seized and imprisoned, and 
all his goods confiscated. In 1207, her agents wanted to take 
a woman and two men from the chapter, and the excesses 
which were committed in this connection were so extreme 
that the quarrel was carried to the king's court. In 1210, a 
chorister of Notre-Dame was arrested and thrown into prison 
by the officers of the count; in retaliation, the chapter laid 
an interdict on the city. A few months later a formidable 
riot broke out; the cathedral was threatened, and the house 
of the dean was much damaged with stones and axes. Philip 
Augustus was compelled to reestablish order and to punish 
the guilty, among whom were seigniorial officers. In most 
of the cities with chapters there were similar occurrences: 
lawsuits and battles between barons and clerics, violations 
of cloisters, plunder and destruction of canon's houses; for- 
tunate, indeed, were those canons who suffered no bodily 
injury ! 

In 1217, the chapter of Laon, victim of the persecutions 
and the depredations of the count of Rethel, denounced him 
at Rome. The pope excommunicated him. The count braved 
the anathema for two years; finally, Honorius III decided 
to take more vigorous measures against him: he ordered an 
interdict laid on all his lands, and on all parts through which 
he should travel, and absolved his vassals from the oath of 
fealty as long as he remained under sentence of interdict. 
" And, if the culprit still persists in his error," wrote the 
^ope, " let him take care that he is not condemned as a 
heretic." The same chapter had, the year before, been the 
victim of a more serious attack — one that scandalized the 
whole of France. Enguerran of Coucy seized Adam of Cour- 
landon, dean of the church of Laon, and kept him in prison 



294 SOCIAL FEANCE 

for more than a year. Exeommunieation, interdict, prayers, 
threats, the intervention of the archbishop of Reims and the 
king of France — all were tried to obtain the deliverance of 
the captive. It was not until 1218 that this Enguerran of 
Couey decided to seek absolution and to give satisfaction to 
the chapter. 

Attacks on the canons then complete the story. We do 
not mention aggressions against cures, because the sources 
of our epoch say nothing about them. But, perhaps, attacks 
on cures were less frequent, for the simple reason that the 
baron, being patron or even proprietor of the whole or a 
part of the parish church, could select a parson that suited 
him and could lay hands on the tithes without much hin- 
drance. How could a plain cure have prevented this, even 
if he had not been nominated by the seignior? In any case, 
the cure was not in a position to resist, and the church con- 
demned the exploitation of the inferior clergy only under 
compulsion. Monasteries, and chapters sometimes, succeeded 
in defending themselves ; they were assisted by bishops, kings, 
and popes. We have already given examples of the inter- 
vention of the supreme head of the church, and must recog- 
nize the full importance of the role which Rome assumed in 
defending monks and canons against the excesses and depre- 
dations of feudalism. But the pope could not act every- 
where at once or under all circumstances: he was far away, 
and usually he had only a moral authority to oppose to the 
assailants. The king of France also fulfilled his traditional 
duty of protector of churches; but he rarely did it gratui- 
tously, and his police operations were very intermittent. The 
barons whom he warned to surrender some monastery might 
have objected that he himself did not always set the best 
example. " One day," relates Rigord, the historian of Philip 
Augustus, " the king, passing by Saint-Denis on affairs of 
the realm, installed himself in the abbey as though he were 
entering his own room (sicut in propriam cameram suam). 
The abbot of Saint-Denis, William of Gap, was overcome with 
fright (nimio timore perculsus), for the king required of him 
a thousand marks in silver. The abbot, having assembled 
the brethren of the chapter, tendered his resignation. ' ' That 
is how the king of France protected the monks of the most 



THE NOBLE AT WAR 295 

regal of his abbeys! In all stages of the feudal hierarchy, 
brigandage, violence, and extortion were employed in the 
systematic fleecing of monastic and capitular churches. For 
the few cases where seigniors were intimidated or repressed 
by royal soldiers and papal excommunications, how many 
murders, arsons, and robberies committed against the church 
remained unnoticed and unpunished? 

On this subject there is a significant document which tells 
much about the acts of the feudal barons. It is a record 
of the statutes of the synod of Toul held May 8, 1192, by 
Eudes of Vaudemont, bishop of Toul. Here are a few of 
these statutes: 

"It is forbidden under pain of anathema to celebrate religious 
services at any place, in which objects taken from churches or 
clerics are kept even for a single night. — The robbers and the re- 
ceivers are excommunicated. — These interdicts and anathemas are 
appMoable to princes and great barons who commit robberies. — The 
excommunication of the guilty shall be renewed every Sunday in 
the churches of the diocese. — Those who give them shelter are also 
excommunicate. — The anathema shall fall upon all men who abuse 
their rank and power by taking horses or wagons from monasteries. 
— If in spite of his excommunication a prince or baron has divine 
services performed the priest who officiates shall also be excom- 
municated and forever deprived of his prebend." 

It is impossible to make a better statement showing the 
extent to which feudalism lived on pillage; or the power of 
excommunication to hold it in cheek. 



The bishops had to shift for themselves. Everywhere they 
were at war with the feudal barons: the count of Auxerre 
fought against the bishop of Auxerre; the duke of Nor- 
mandy, against the archbishop of Rouen; the duke of Brit- 
tany, against the bishop of Nantes; the count of Auvergne, 
against the bishop of Clermont; the viscount of Beam, 
against the bishop of Oloron ; the count of Rodez against the 
bishop of Rodez; the count of Forez, against the archbishop 
of Lyons ; the count of Armagnac, against the archbishop of 
Auch; the count of Foix, against the bishop of Urgel; the 
count of Soissons, against the bishop of Soissons ; the viscount 



296 SOCIAL FRANCE 

of Polignac, against the bishop of Puy; the nobility of Ver- 
dun, against the bishop of Verdun. All regions of France 
were victims of the same evil. 

This enumeration, which could easily be lengthened, shows 
that conflicts between the two powers were part of the regu- 
lar order of things. To be sure, they did not everywhere 
have the same causes and the same character: here they were 
simple acts of brigandage, there combats for sovereignty; 
here a listless and intermittent conflict, there a violent and 
merciless war. But everywhere the results were identical: 
depredation in the country, fights and brawls in the city, 
innumerable excommunications and interdicts on the part of 
the church, exasperation and vengeance on the part of the 
feudal lords, who did not halt even at assassination. 

Let us glance into Beam between 1212 and 1215, the time 
when Philip Augustus was engaged in the struggle against 
the great coalition which culminated at Bouvines. The 
viscount of Beam, Gaston VI, was at war with the bishop of 
Oloron, Bernard of Morlaas. He was accused of sympathiz- 
ing with the Albigenses. Bandits in his pay had entered 
the cathedral church of Sainte-Marie of Oloron and had 
committed all kinds of excesses — such as dashing the sacred 
utensils on the floor, amusing themselves by wearing the 
pontifical vestments, preaching, and even singing a mock 
mass. Gaston VI let this sacrilege go unpunished; he at- 
tacked the clergy; and was publicly considered a persecutor 
of the church. In 1213, the council of Vabres declared him 
excommunicated, and absolved his subjects from the oath of 
fealty. This excommunication , lasted two years. Finally, 
Gaston submitted and made an apology to the bishop. There 
follows the proof of his defeat, written by himself. 



" Know all ye, present and future, that I, Gaston, viscount of 
Beam, at the suggestion of Satan have been guilty of many mis- 
deeds against the church of Sainte-Marie of Oloron. I have caused 
much damage, both to this cathedral church and to the subjects 
of the bishop. For this reason and for many other excesses com- 
mitted by me, I have been smitten by several excommunications. 
I have persevered for a long time in my obstinate resistance. 
Finally, the grace of God inspiring me, I decided to obey, and I 
earnestly prayed Bernard of Morlaas, bishop of the said church, 



THE NOBLE AT WAE 297 

to deliver me from the curse which bound me and to impose on me 
the penitence which I had merited. H^ has removed all the sen- 
tences of excommunication laid upon me. Although my crimes 
were without number and the objects taken by me from the church 
incalculable, still to indenmify the church for her losses, I have 
given her all the men and all the rights which I possessed in the 
town of Sainte-Marie of Oloron." 

Here the bishop easily triumphed over the feudal power, 
because he was favored by exceptional circumstances. The 
Albigenses and their partizans had just been defeated in the 
battle of Muret. The south was in the hands of Simon de 
Montfort and the catholic bishops. The southern seigniors, 
who, like Gaston of Beam, were at the same time the perse- 
cutors of the church and the supporters of heresy, had to 
yield to force and repent or have their lands confiscated by 
the leaders of the crusade. * 

In the north and in the middle part of France it was less 
dangerous to fight against the bishops. Let us glance into 
Auvergne, a savage country, where a pillaging feudalism had 
the habit not only of putting monasteries to ransom, but of 
fighting with the bishops of Clermont and of Puy. We shall 
later speak of the bloody drama which stained the bishopric 
of Puy. Clermont was the center of a long-standing war be- 
tween the bishops and the counts of Auvergne, which had 
endured from the beginning of the twelfth century. The 
bishop, relentlessly despoiled and maltreated by his rival, 
escaped from prison and even worse dangers by calling the 
king of Prance to his aid. Louis VI and later Louis VII 
invaded Auvergne, forced the count to submit, and reestab- 
lished the bishop in his see and in his domains; but the 
king had hardly turned his back, before the prelate and the 
baron were again at odds. The war was all the more bloody 
and furious because the bishop and the count often belonged 
to the same family. It happened that in this house of 
Auvergne the older brother inherited the county and the 
younger brother the bishopric. What feuds between broth- 
ers are, is well known. There was a similar case during the 
reign of Philip Augustus : Robert I, bishop of Clermont, and 
his brother, Gui II, count of Auvergne, were at open war 
for eighteen years, from 1197 to 1215, during which time 



298 SOCIAL FRANCE 

the count was perpetually exeommuiiicated and the bishop 
continually imprisoned. 

It goes without saying that, if the count of Auvergne was 
a brigand, the bishop of Clermont was not exactly a sweet 
and angelic minister of peace. Intrenched in his strong 
castles of Lezoux and of Mau2:un, he was a robber chieftain. 
"Which of these brothers committed the first oif ense ? Accord- 
ing to the count of Auvergne, it was the bishop who began 
it ; and, indeed, there is some question as to which of the two 
was the more irritating and belligerent. The count, in 1198, 
wrote to Pope Innocent III to implore his protection against 
the bishop (it was usually the reverse), and this protection 
he paid for in advance, by giving the Roman church the 
castle of Usson, which he had just constructed. 

"I beg you to defend me against my brother Robert, bishop of 
Clermont. With his bands of free-booters and of Basques and in 
violation of all law, he devastates my land and subjects it to arson, 
murdjer, and brigandage. I east myself at the feet of Your Holi- 
ness and beg you to stop these outrages and to annul the sentence 
of excommunication which he has pronounced agaiast my land." 

The count of Auvergne sought the support of the pope, 
because the bishop, as was usual in such cases, had appealed 
to the king of France. The question was still more compli- 
cated by the conflicting claims of England and of France 
to the sovereignty of Auvergne ; the bishop was for the Cape- 
tians, and the count for the Plantagenets. This was what 
prolonged and embittered the hostilities. 

Between the two brothers, periods of peace were not long. 
After a semblance of reconciliation in 1201, the war began 
afresh in 1206, more violent and more murderous than ever. 
The bishop was thrown into prison by the count for the 
third time; the latter was again excommunicated; but he 
revenged himself by stealing the goods of the church. He 
stormed the abbey of Mozac, which the abbot took pleasure 
in enriching ; maltreated and dispersed the monks, demolished 
their buildings, appropriated their treasure, and, to cap the 
climax, carried away the famous relic of Saint Austremoine 
and placed it in one of his castles. An enormous scandal! 



THE NOBLE AT WAR 299 

A bishop imprisoned; an abbey, under the protection of the 
king of France, violated and destroyed! From all the reli- 
gious centers of Auvergne a loud cry of indignation rose to 
Philip Augustus, who finally decided to intervene effect- 
ively between the irreconcilable brothers. But he did not, 
as his father, Louis VII, and his grandfather, Louis VI, 
intervene as a distinterested arbitrator. He interfered to 
award himself the object of litigation — to appropriate the 
county of Auvergne, which he had coveted for a long time. 
The chief of his retainers, Cadoc, and his vassal, Gui of 
Dampierre, arrived, in 1210, with a great army. They be- 
sieged the castles of Riom and of Tournoel, took one after 
another the one hundred and twenty donjons of Count Grui, 
captured innumerable prisoners, among them the son of the 
count, and in three years finished the difficult conquest. 
"When the French entered the famous fortress of Tournoel, 
perched on its volcanic rock and reputed inaccessible, they 
found in it a quantity of missals, of reliquaries, of sacerdotal 
vestments, and of other precious objects taken from Mozac 
and various other abbeys of the region. 

The church had the last word : the bishop of Clermont suc- 
ceeded, but to the detriment of his family and his political 
power. The county of Auvergne was dismembered forever: 
the king of France, installed at Riom, occupied the greater 
part of it; and Gui II, despoiled of his patrimony and 
obliged to take refuge in a neighboring province, could medi- 
tate at leisure on the inconvenience which results when 
civil power is out of harmony with religious power. 

Other barons at the same time gave proof of this. War 
on the episcopacy had also broken out in Brittany with espe- 
cial violence. There was the same difference between Gui II, 
count of Auvergne, and Peter of Dreux, count of Brittany, 
that there is between a needy and covetous mountain king 
and the suzerain and sovereign of a great province, inde- 
pendent by its traditions and its position. Peter of Dreux 
was a self-willed, determined man, with a definite political 
policy. He wanted to be master of Brittany, just as the 
king of France was of the Capetian domain, and to suppress 
all local powers, feudal as well as ecclesiastical. On account of 
this aim he deserved his surname of Mauclerc (mauvais clerc) : 



300 SOCIAL FRANCE 

he passed his life in fighting the church, which was stronger 
in Brittany than in any other place. In this country the 
parish clergy collected, besides the tithe, the galling taxes of 
tiercage (a tax levied on the inheritance of personal prop- 
erty) and of past nuptial (a tax on marriages). The 
bishops enjoyed regal rights, and pretended not to rec- 
ognize the sovereignty of the count. Therefore, after 1217, 
Peter of Dreux made aggressive war on the bishop of Nantes. 
He let his agents pillage and burn episcopal houses ; take 
their lands and their revenues; imprison, maim, and even 
torture the clerics. The bishop and his chapter, forced to 
leave Brittany, tried to find a refuge in the neighboring 
dioceses. 

Several times excommunicated by his victim, Peter of 
Dreux even braved the pope. Honorius III, in 1218, re- 
proached him for all his misdeeds and ordered him to abstain 
" from these works of death, which would lead to eternal 
damnation if he did not repent "; let him beware lest his 
resistance to excommunication expose him to the suspicion 
of heresy. In any case, if he persists in his conduct, the apos- 
tolic authority will punish him and will, if it is necessary, 
absolve his subjects and his vassals from their oath of fealty. 
*' Open your eyes," said the pope in closing, '* and take care 
not to put your foot into such a dangerous net that you can- 
not withdraw it." The excommunication and the interdict 
were not removed before the full submission of the count, 
January 28, 1220. The conditions which were imposed on 
him were severe: he had to restore all that he had taken, 
disavow and punish his agents, indemnify all ecclesiastical 
subjects who had suffered violence in the war, renounce their 
homage, and finally promise to restore the bishop of Nantea. 
and his church to the condition in which they were at the 
beginning of hostilities. 

The men of the middle ages resigned themselves all the 
more easily to the humiliation of defeat and of reparation, 
because at that time no one was ashamed to yield to the 
church; and, besides, they did not long observe the treaties 
by which they abandoned their rights. A few years later, 
Peter of Dreux renewed the war, this time much more skil- 
fully, for he united all the lay seigniors of his duchy in a 



THE NOBLE AT WAE 301 

persistent campaign against the privileges and the jurisdic- 
tion of the bishops. 

But it was in another part of feudal France that the war 
between the count and the bishop reached its maximum of 
violence and of savagery. The count of Auxerre and of 
Tonnerre, Peter of Courtenay, a relative of Philip Augustus, 
was a passionate, brutal noble, absolutely lacking moderation 
and prudence. Opposed to him was the bishop of Auxerre, 
Hugh of Noyers, also a noble of rude disposition, very much 
attached to his temporal interests, and fully determined to 
bend neither before the feudal barons nor even before the 
king: in brief, an incorrigible and bellicose minister of God, 
a fighting bishop. These two men were destined to collide 
and to engage in continuous and bitter conflict. 

Because of their quarrels, the city of Auxerre was under 
interdict for nearly fifteen years. One must imagine to what 
a convulsive and revolutionary condition a city under in- 
terdict was reduced, how consciences and social life were 
upset, to grasp the gravity of such a thing as the closing of 
the churches and the denial of the sacraments for so long a 
time. At most it was permitted to baptize children and give 
Extreme Unction to the dying. This critical situation, in 
the long run, became dangerous, for heresy appeared in the 
region, especially at Nevers and at La Charite, where certain 
miscreants had been burned, and the people could not be 
allowed to go without the sacraments and the mass. Hugh 
of Noyers and his chapter, knowing the obduracy of the 
count, finally adopted the following system: every time that 
the excommunicated count decided to enter the city, the 
bells of the great church of Auxerre were rung with all their 
force, to notify the inhabitants and the clerics. At that 
signal churches were closed, religious services were inter- 
rupted, and the city went into mourning. When the count 
left, the bells rang again, the sanctuaries reopened (except 
for the men and officers of Peter of Courtenay), and normal 
life was resumed. One can well understand how painful and 
irritating this procedure was for the count of Auxerre. ' ' He 
could not," said the chronicler, ** enter or leave the city 
without causing great confusion; and, above all, he did not 
dare stay long, because of the clamor of the people." The 



302 SOCIAL FRANCE 

bishop had found an excellent means of dispossessing the 
count of his capital. 

The anger of such an irascible man as Peter of Courtenay 
broke out from time to time in acts of vengeance. One day 
he entirely destroyed a church belonging to the bishop, the 
church of Saint- Adrien. Another time he had the eyes of one 
of the bishop's vassals plucked out. He plundered the do- 
mains of the church. In 1203, he was living in his city, 
which was, as a result, under interdict. The clergy had 
refused to give a little child ecclesiastical burial. The 
mother, weeping and wailing, sought Peter of Courtenay 
to lodge her complaint. With singular nicety, he ordered 
his officers to take the little body, to force the episcopal 
palace, and to inter the child in the sleeping-chamber of 
the bishop, before his bed. Hugh of Noyers hurled a new 
anathema against his enemy. Peter replied by expelling the 
bishop and his canons from Auxerre, saying that he did so 
at the command of Philip Augustus, who was also hostile to 
Hugh of Noyers. And in fact the king, who also had cause 
to complain of this troublesome prelate, sustained his rela- 
tive, the count of Auxerre. The situation became grave, and 
the scandal intolerable. Innocent III wrote menacing letters 
to Peter of Courtenay and to Philip Augustus, The count 
laughed at them and continued his persecutions. One day 
he amused himself by pretending that he wanted to make 
peace with the church and end the affair honorably. He 
invited the bishop, the dean, the archdeacon, the cantor, and 
the other dignitaries of the chapter to come to Auxerre to 
receive his submission. The clerics, overjoyed, left their 
country homes, where they had taken refuge, to come back 
to the city; but they learned on the way that the count of 
Auxerre, far from thinking of a reconciliation, was sending 
his troops out after them. They immediately turned back, 
and, instead of stopping at a certain priory as they had 
intended, took another route. And it was well they did, 
for soon the soldiers of the count fell on this priory, broke 
down its gates with their axes, and searched all the cells 
like madmen, without finding those for whom they were 
looking. 

The bishop realized that even the episcopal houses of the 



THE NOBLE AT WAE 303 

country were no longer safe for him, and took refuge in the 
monastery of Pontigny. Peter ordered the abbot of Pontigny 
to expel his guest, and threatened to plunder the abbey in 
case he was refused. Hugh of Noyers then decided to go 
into exile. This time Innocent III lost patience: he wrote 
to Philip Augustus that, if lie did not force the count of 
Auxerre to submit and allow the bishop to return to his city, 
the king himself should be held responsible and should suffer 
for the crime of his vassal. " Do not force me," said he, 
** to lay the hand of correction on you, and take care that, 
in persecuting a bishop noted as this one is for the rude 
vigor with which he suppresses heretics, you do not gain the 
reputation of being a fomentor of heresy." 

Philip Augustus could not endure such a reproach. He 
was then in the very midst of his wars with John Lackland 
and his preparations for the conquest of Normandy: it was 
no time for him to be embarrassed by a conflict with the 
church. Peter of Courtenay, reduced to his own resources, 
had to capitulate, and in 1204 he promised, seriously this 
time, to humiliate himself before^ the bishop of Auxerre and 
the archbishops of Bourges and of Sens. The demands of the 
bishop surpass imagination. The chronicler of Auxerre tells 
us that the ceremony of submission brought many clerics 
into the city, and it is no wonder : the spectacle was certainly 
novel. The count of Auxerre, barefooted, clad only in a shirt, 
went into the bedroom of the bishop ; with his own hands he 
disinterred the body of the child buried there for some months, 
* ' already putrid and emitting a sickening odor, ' ' and carried 
the corpse on his own shoulders to the cemetery, where he 
gave it final burial. " It was for his own safety," added 
the chronicler, * ' that he humiliated himself thus before God ; 
God who knows how to bow the head and the neck of kings. ' ' 

The vengeance of the bishop did not stop there. Peter 
of Courtenay had as prime minister and executor a noble of 
Auxerre, named Peter of CourQon, who was detested by the 
clergy, because they knew it was he who had advised and 
incited the count in the war he had waged against the church. 
For a long time Hugh of Noyers could not injure this man, 
because he was protected by the favor of his master. But 
there came a day when Peter of Courgon fell into disgrace. 



304 SOCIAL FEANCE 

and the bishop of Auxerre hastened to profit by it. He had 
him arrested, put him on a cart with four wheels, and had 
him conveyed chained and bareheaded (he was absolutely 
bald) through all the streets and squares of Auxerre; he 
was followed by a hooting crowd. 

To such a pass came the strife between the count and the 
bishop of Auxerre. Even after the death of Hugh of Noyers 
the strife continued. Peter of Courtenay was not on the 
best of terms with the bishop's successor, William of Seigne- 
lay, who also had a stubborn disposition, as was proved by his 
many conflicts with Philip Augustus. What would have hap- 
pened one cannot tell, had not the count of Auxerre, one 
fine day, left the country to validate his rights to the Latin 
throne of Constantinople. Later, one finds in the Chronique 
des eveques d' Auxerre a very curious page, which shows to 
what degree the nobles of the region had been excited by 
their covetousness of ecclesiastical goods and their hatred of 
episcopal power. When, in 1220, Bishop William of Seigne- 
lay left Auxerre to take possession of the see of Paris, to 
which he had been transferred, his departure was a signal 
for an immense pillage by the great and petty barons of 
Auxerre. Barons and lords pounced upon the prey. Herve 
of Donzy, count of Nevers, that persecutor of monks, — ^whose 
struggle with the abbey of Vezelay we already know, — en- 
tered Auxerre with an armed band, and most of the citizens, 
knowing of his cruelties and his exactions, fled. Seigniors of 
the lowest standing invaded the episcopal domains, sacked the 
villas of the bishop, ransomed and massacred his peasants. 
Even at Auxerre the chapter of the cathedral was not safe. 
The dean was seized by a noble and carried to a castle on 
the banks of the Saone, where he remained imprisoned a 
long time. One morning, as the monks were going to serv- 
ices, a troop of horsemen attacked them with naked swords, 
pursued them as far as the church, wounded one of them 
seriously, and crushed another under the hoofs of their 
horses. 

Such incidents were happening almost everywhere; they 
gave a highly dramatic character to the war between the 
nobles and the clerics. But the fury of war and the exas- 
peration of feelings could go still farther. The assassination 



THE NOBLE AT WAR 305 

of abbots and even of bishops by excommunicated nobles was 
fairly frequent. In 1181, and in 1207, two successive bishops 
of Verdun died violent deaths at the hands of seigniors with 
whom they were at war. In 1211, Geoffroi Belvant, abbot 
of Saint-Pierre of Couture, in Maine, was assassinated by 
Hamelin of Faigne, who contested with him the ownership 
of the fief of Semur. In reparation for this crime, Hamelin 
gave the monks an income of ten Mans sous, the fuel for one 
oven, and released the abbey from all homage. His sentence 
was light. In 1219, Gilles, lord of Saint-Michel in Laon, rid 
himself in the same way of the abbot of Saint-Michel, with 
whom he was at war. The murder was committed in the 
very cloister, and he who had planned it was barely fif- 
teen years old. He promised, first, to go and fight the 
Albigenses; then to make a pilgrimage to Rome, where the 
pope would inflict penance upon him; every Friday, for 
fourteen years, he was to eat nothing but bread and water; 
he was to support three paupers, if he could not fast; three 
times a year, on a day of solemn procession, he was to dis- 
cipline himself publicly ; and he was to establish in perpetuity 
in the abbey of Saint-Michel a priest to pray for the soul 
of his victim. In 1222, the son of the viscount of Aubusson 
assassinated the prior of Felletin, a priory dependent on 
Saint-Martial of Limoges. But it was in 1220 that the great 
scandal of the epoch occurred. That would be a strange bit 
of history, an animated and tragic story, which would nar- 
rate the life and the strife of the bishops of Puy during 
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries against the unreasonable 
barons who surrounded them — the viscounts of Polignac, the 
seigniors of Montlaur, of Mercceur, of Rochbaron: a group 
of brigands who wanted a share of the proceeds of the pil- 
grimages to Notre-Dame of Puy; and who without truce 
quarreled with the prelate, intrenched in his cathedral church 
on the summit of Puy, about the sovereignty of Velay and 
the income from its taxes. In 1220, Bishop Robert of Meung, 
after having sustained a sanguinary war which poisoned his 
whole life, was assassinated by a knight whom he had excom- 
municated. Decidedly, it was a terrible epoch, and one in 
which it was not good to have enemies ! 



CHAPTER IX 
THE NOBLE IN TIME OF PEACE 

While he was waging war on his own account or on that 
of the suzerain, in his own struggles or those of others, the 
noble was, as has been seen, by taste, habit, and necessity, a 
soldier whose service did not often cease. There were, how- 
ever, in the interminable series of wars some intervals of 
peace and inactivity, especially during the winter season. 
When he had ceased pillaging, burning, and killing the enemy 
of the soil, how was he to employ his time? 

In those days he had one favorite occupation, which was 
anything but peaceful. In order to keep his hand in train- 
ing while resting, he battled in tournaments.^ 

In the historical ballad Guillaume le Marechal, the re- 
cital of tournaments occupies almost three thousand of the 
twenty thousand verses. The author describes fifteen tourna- 
ments, which followed one another within a few years in the 
regions of Normandy, Chartres, and Perche. Moreover, he 
speaks only of the most celebrated and of those in which 
his hero took part. He says himself that he has not men- 
tioned them aU, and for this reason: " I cannot keep up 
with all the tournaments that take place; it would take 
great trouble to do that, for almost every fortnight there is 
a tournament in some place or other." 

A tournament every fortnight! The frequence of this 
exercise is vouched for by other contemporary historians; 
by Lambert of Ardres, who shows us the counts of Guines 
and the lords of Ardres frequenting tournaments and spend- 
ing money foolishly; by Gilbert of Mons, who informs so 

* The tournament waa called torneamentum, gyrum, or hastilvdium 
in the Latin of contemporaries of Philip Augustus ; torneamentum or 
gyrum because this military game, this practice at war, took place 
within fences or lists formed by palings placed in a circle or a square; 
hastiludium because the blows of the lance (hasta) play the important 
rOle, the lance being the noble's weapon par excellence. 

306 



THE NOBLE IN TIME OF PEACE 307 

well of the life of the lords of Lorraine and Belgium. Ac- 
cording to him, every creation of new knights, every great 
marriage, had almost necessarily to be accompanied by a 
tournament, in which the young barons could exhibit their 
strength and bear their first arms. And this fact is fully 
confirmed by the ballad Garin le Lorrain: ** Sire," said the 
messenger of Count Fromont to King Pepin, " the count has 
sent me to request a tournament for to-morrow morning. 
His son Fromondin is a new knight ; the father wishes to see 
how he will bear his arms." The two tournaments which, in 
this lay, took place under the walls of Bordeaux were the 
immediate result of a gathering of knighthood. 

But why this superabundance of tourneys? Because the 
tournament was a veritable military school; by these volun- 
tary and regulated combats, one exercised and trained him- 
self for that offensive and defensive strife which entirely filled 
the life of the noble. Thus it was, at least, that contem- 
poraries justified the tournament. It will be sufficient to 
cite the well-known passage from the English chronicler, 
Roger of Hoveden: 

" A knight eamiot shine in war if he has not been prepared for 
it in the tournaments. He must have seen his own blood flow, 
have had his teeth crackle under the blow of his adversary, have 
been dashed to the earth with such force as to feel the weight of 
his foe, and, disarmed twenty times, he must twenty times have 
retrieved his failures, more set than ever upon the combat. Thus, 
will he be able to confront actual war with the hope of being 
victorious." 

But was this a common institution throughout the whole 
of feudal Europe? No. It was thought, and indeed stated, 
in the time of Philip Augustus that the tournament was es- 
sentially a French custom, a fashion of our own, which spread 
quickly, it is true, into the neighboring provinces. With 
this opinion the English chroniclers agree; they call tourna- 
ments, French struggles (conflictus gallici) ; and the poem 
Chiillaume le Marechal, indeed, shows us Englishmen and 
Flemings constantly coming to France to frequent tourna- 
ments. It is for this, without doubt, that William Marshal, 
although a combatant of the first rank, proclaims the superi- 



308 SOCIAL FRANCE 

ority of the French: " I speak of the French first. There is 
good reason why they ought to stand first: because of their 
pride, their valor, and the glory of their country." This 
confession from an English mouth is to be noted. According 
to several authors of the time, Richard the Lion-Hearted was 
the first to introduce into England the custom of tourna- 
ments, his object being to take away from the French just 
that incontestable superiority which their training had given 
them. The English took it up with such passion that Rich- 
ard, a very practical financier in spite of his knightly 
tastes, saw a way of getting revenue by imposing a tax upon 
the knights who entered the lists. 

Of French origin or not, be that as it may, the institution 
of the tournament was more flourishing in France than any- 
where else; and, to get a clear impression of this fact, one 
should read the descriptions of scenes upon which the biog- 
rapher of William Marshal dwells with an evident delight. 

First of all, one notices that the tournament did not dif- 
fer much from war properly so-called; that they were prac- 
tically alike, except for the systematic pillage of fields and 
the massacres of peasants. The nobles armed themselves for 
the tournament exactly as for real battle; if they usually 
strove to capture each other for the sake of taking profit from 
ransoming their prisoners, it still happened that they 
wounded and killed each other. In 1208, when Philip Augus- 
tus decided to knight his son, Louis — ^that is, to emanci- 
pate him, — for the sake of precaution he caused him to sub- 
scribe to certain promises, among others never to take part 
in a tournament. Prince Louis, the future Louis VIII, had 
to content himself with attending the tournaments, which took 
place near his residence, as a simple spectator, wearing a 
helmet only: that is, in undress uniform, so that he might 
not be impelled to descend into the lists and use his lance. 
Why this precaution? Because Prince Louis was the only 
male heir to the crown, and the life of an heir-presumptive 
must not be subjected to any risk. 

One of the reasons for the church's prohibition of the 
tournaments was simply that they were dangerous and even 
fatal to the nobility. But not the whole of the tournament 
depended on the battle. There were districts and circum- 



THE NOBLE IN TIME OF PEACE 309 

stances in which the tournament was no more than a 
parade, a military procession in the lists where the nobles 
rode, richly clad and followed by servants, who bore their 
arms. Such was the tournament of 1184, which was given at 
Mainz in connection with the knighting of the son of Fred- 
erick Barbarossa. Gilbert of Mons states that this tourna- 
ment was a peaceful one (gyrum sine armis). The knights, 
he adds, were pleased with these festivities, at which they 
carried their shields, lances, and banners with great pomp, 
and coursed their horses, but without delivering any blows. 
It may be that this was the German custom ; it was certainly 
not the French custom; indeed, all the tourneys described in 
the poem Guillaume le Marechal were serious combats, in 
which they fought in earnest, even to the shedding of blood. 

In these encounters it was not, indeed, a question of indi- 
vidual tilts between picked knights. The knighthood of sev- 
eral provinces appointed a rendezvous, and entire armies 
entered the lists, to charge with eagerness upon one another. 
In the tournament at Lagny-sur-Marne more than three thou- 
sand knights were engaged, and the biographer of "William 
Marshal relates in detail the composition of the force: 
Frenchmen, Englishmen, Flemings, Normans, Angevins, and 
Burgundians came to blows. It was on these occasions, espe- 
cially, that rivalries, or rather those provincial hatreds which 
played such a great part in the wars of the times, were given 
free rein. Considering the number of combatants, a tourney 
like that of Lagny, which was fought in the open field, ex- 
actly resembled a decisive action of real war. On the other 
hand, let one compare the account of this historical tourna- 
ment with the imaginary tourney described by the author 
of Garin le Lorrain, and he will admit that, in this instance, 
poetry has only borrowed its facts from history. 



" The plain seemed to be nothing less than a forest of glittering 
helmets, above which floated brilliant pennons. . . . The two armies 
having come face to face, slowly approached each other until they 
were not further separated than the range of a bow. Who would 
make the first attack, who would be the first to make a sortie from 
the lines? It was the young Fromondin. His shield hard against 
his breast, he encountered a knight and unhorsed him, hurled him- 
self on another whom he likewise overthrew. His lance was shat- 



310 SOCIAL FRANCE 

tered, but with a fragment he still thrust and threatened. . . . 
Already order in the two armies was gone ; the melee became general. 
Each lanee crossed another, and the earth was covered with their 
debris; the vassals were thrown and their terrified horses fled; the 
wounded uttered horrible cries; and it was not in one place, but 
in twenty or forty different places that they thrust at each other 
to give or take death. Led by William of Montclin, Fromont, and 
Bernard of Naisil, the men of Bordeaux steadily advanced and at 
length reached the battle of Garin/ The hero resisted their efforts 
for a long while; five times he fell and remounted another horse; 
woe to the man who did not escape the edge of his sword! With 
one blow he cut down the Fleming, Baldwin; with a second, Ber- 
nard of Naisil; finally covered with sweat, he went to a place apart 
where no one dared to follow him. There he was able to unfasten 
his helmet and refresh himself for an instant. The French, over- 
whelmed by numbers, were about to abandon the field to the 
Bordelais when the Angevins, Normans, and Bretons came to their 
aid; all that they could do was to collect them again under the 
standard." 

The only difference between this tournament and that of 
Lagny is that the latter was less bloody. In any ease, ac- 
cording to the biographer of William Marshal, the knights 
who were taken prisoners mattered more than those who 
were killed or grievously wounded. 

" Banners were unfurled ; the field was so full of them that the 
sun was concealed. There was great noise and din. All strove to 
strike well. Then, you would have heard such a crash of lances 
that the earth was strewn with fragments and that the horses could 
not advance further. Great was the tumult upon the field. Each 
corps of the army cheered its ensign. The knights seized each 

other's bridles and went to each other's aid.''* 

< 

Soon the young king of England, the eldest son of Henry 
II, gave the signal for the grand melee. Then began a des- 
perate strife in the vineyards, the ditches, across the thick 
forests of vine-stocks. One could see the horses falling, and 
men sinking, trampled under foot, wounded and beaten to 
death. As always, William Marshal distinguished himself; 
everything he struck vrith his sword was cloven and cut to 
pieces; he pierced bucklers and dented helmets. 

In the epic of the Lorrains, the tournament finished, the 

^ That is, the body of the army of Garin. 



THE NOBLE IN TIME OF PEACE 311 

heroes are seen returning to camp witli their spoils: that is 
to say, with the prisoners for whom they will take ransom. 
This was the gain of the day, the utilitarian and practical 
side of the tournament. This is particularly brought out in 
the biography of William Marshal. The knights went to 
tournaments for the sake of getting money ; William Marshal 
engaged in tourneys in order to get a supply of horses and 
harness, and prisoners to ransom. In a certain joust, ** he 
won at least twelve horses." He was associated with a dar- 
ing companion, named Koger of Gaugi, and the two made 
innumerable captures, of which their clerks kept track. * ' The 
clerks proved positively, in writing, that, between Pentecost 
and Lent, they took three hundred knights prisoners, with- 
out counting horses and harness." 

And what curious incidents are further related in the poem 
Guillaume le Marechal! — the exchange of visits by knights 
on the eve of the tournament, at the inns, where they chatted 
gayly over two jugs of wine; Marshal running through the 
crowded streets of a little village at night in pursuit of a 
thief who had taken his horse. This same Marshal had had 
his helmet so dented in the tournament that he could not 
take it off after the battle, and was obliged to seek a black- 
smith and put his head on the anvil so as to free himself 
from this unlucky casque by hammer-blows. In these bloody 
jousts, in which the nobility delighted, everybody found profit : 
the ** joy women " who rushed to them, the common people 
who loved these exhibitions, and the merchants who held a 
market in the neighborhood of the lists. 
" Only the church did not approve of tournaments, and used 
all her power to prevent them. She condemned them as she 
did war, and for the same reasons. At the end of the twelfth 
century, especially, she had a very powerful motive in op- 
posing this useless nonsense, in which the nobility spent money 
and blood, instead of devoting both of them to religion, in 
expeditions to the Holy Land. The tourneys harmed the 
crusade, and that was enough to make the church seek to 
suppress them. From the beginning of the twelfth century 
religious prohibitions were multiplied. At the Lateran coun- 
cil, in 1179, Pope Alexander III had renewed the prohibitions 
of his predecessors and threatened the organizers and com- 



312 SOCIAL FRANCE 

batants with anathema. A decree of this council calls tour- 
naments " those detestable festivals or fairs at which knights 
have the habit of meeting in order to show their valor and 
come to blows, those fetes from which issues death to the 
body and damnation to the soul." The council decided that 
those who should be killed in them should be deprived of 
ecclesiastical burial. Innocent III renewed the same prohibi- 
tions at the Lateran council in 1215; ecclesiastical writers 
were urged to wage a campaign against this deplorable in- 
stitution. A contemporary of Philip Augustus, the historian 
and monk, Cgesar of Heisterbach, says in his Dialogues: 
*' Will those who perish in the tournaments by that same 
blow go to hell ? That is a question which need not be asked, 
unless, indeed, they be saved by contrition." And he tells 
the story of a Spanish priest, to whom appeared certain 
knights killed in tournaments, begging that some one pray 
for them to deliver them from the eternal flames. Another 
legend, of a later time it is true, shows us demons in the 
form of crows and vultures fluttering over lists where about 
sixty jousters lay dead, most of them asphyxiated by dust. 
Ever since St. Bernard, churchmen had only words of repro- 
bation with which to designate tourneys, " those execrable 
and accursed festivals." 

In their turn, preachers thundered from the pulpit. 
Jacques of Vitry expressed himself at length on this 
subject : 

" I remember that on one tournament day I chatted with a knight 
who frequented them a great deal and invited many heralds-at-arms 
and players. In other respects he was religious enough and did 
not believe he was doing wrong in giving himself up to this sort 
of sport. I attempted to demonstrate to him, how in the tourneys 
one committed the seven capital sins: the sin of pride which comes 
from self, since these reprobate soldiers come to joust in order to 
dazzle the spectators, to vaunt their exploits and to carry off the 
prize of vain-glory; the sin of envy, for each one is jealous of his 
companions to see that they are reputed braver under arms, and 
exhausts himself in trying to surpass them; hate and passion have 
there also a splendid field for exercise, since striking one another 
is a feature, and generally men come away wounded unto death." 

As for the sin of sloth or melancholy, as Jacques of Vitry 
calls it, one can see that the preacher is a trifle embar- 



THE NOBLE IN TIME OF PEACE 313 

rassed, but he extricates himself from the difficulty by this 
phrase : 



" The lovers of the tourney are so absorbed in their vain pleasures 
that they no longer show any activity in acquiring the spiritual 
goods necessary for their salvation; and as for the melancholy, it 
often comes to them from the fact that, not having been able to 
triumph over their adversaries, and even having been obliged to 
flee ignominiously, they return home in a very melancholy state." 



Quite a subtile explanation; but the preacher takes his 
revenge with the sin of avarice or plunder. First the 
jousters, he says, were brigands, since they seize the person 
of an adversary or at least take his horse away from him; 
but, further, tournaments always give place to detestable 
pillage : nobles despoil their subjects without mercy ; wherever 
they ride they injure the crops and cause incalculable harm 
to the poor peasants. Then comes the sixth mortal sin, glut- 
tony; one could not deny that it appeared in tourneys, since 
on this occasion the knights invited each other to banquets 
and spent their substance and even that of the poor in use- 
less drinking. Ah ! certainly, ' ' they are exceedingly gener- 
ous with another's goods." Quidquid delirant reges plectun- 
tur Achivi! Finally comes lust. Do not the jousters first 
of all seek to please immodest women, to parade before them 
their strength and their exploits? They even go so far as 
to wear their colors, or objects which these women have given 
them. It is, then, because of the disorders and cruelty com- 
mitted in tournaments, because of the homicides and spilling 
of blood, that the church has determined to refuse Christian 
burial to those finding death in that manner. 

Neither sermons of this sort, nor terrifying legends, nor 
thundering anathemas by clerics influenced the nobility or 
succeeded in abolishing tournaments. Habit, the passion 
for fighting, the fashion, against which all legislation is power- 
less, continued stronger than the papacy and councils. The 
church was herself obliged to recognize that she had not suc- 
ceeded in imposing her will, and had constantly to relax her 
rigors, to temporize, and come to terms with the evil which 
she wished to destroy. Of this we have very clear proof 



314 SOCIAL FRANCE 

in one of the letters of Innocent III. Here is what hap- 
pened, in 1207, in the diocese of Soissons. 

Nivelon of Cherizy, bishop of Soissons, one of the heroes 
of the fourth crusade, and an energetic man, under pressure 
from the papacy sought to organize a new expedition for 
a crusade or at least for the Latin Empire. He found that 
the tourneys, as always, did his project harm, so, with the 
pope 's copsent, he excommunicated all the jousters in a body. 
Murmurs, protests, and revolt from a majority of the knights 
who had taken part in the tournament of Laon resulted. They 
declared that, as the measure was directed against them, they 
would refuse to take the cross and would not give a sou to- 
wards the needs of the Holy Land. Nivelon, perplexed, 
asked permission of Pope Innocent III to soften the rigor 
of his own anathema for a time. Innocent III accorded it 
to him and felt himself obliged to explain his conduct to 
the archbishops and bishops of the province of Tours, and 
probably also to the prelates of the other provinces. He man- 
aged it by means of a circular: 



" It is not our intention to authorize tourneys, which are forbidden 
by our holy canons. But since the measures we have taken have 
seemed to us momentarily to offer grave inconvenience we have 
permitted the bishop to relax the sentence of excommunication, 
both of those whom he himself has sentenced, or of any others." 



This was opportunism in the highest degree ; but in the mid- 
dle ages the popes reputed to be the most inflexible, as Greg- 
ory VII himself, knew infinitely better than the local clergy 
how to accommodate principles to the necessities of the prac- 
tical and present. "When the nobles who were banned by the 
bishop of Soissons learned that they had been absolved, they 
manifested joy and determined that each one of them should 
send a certain sum of money to the Holy Land. But to prom- 
ise and to fulfil are two different things. Innocent III com- 
missioned the archbishop of Tours to see to it that the 
knights, having once returned to their province, should pay, 
according to their promises. If they should fail in their 
pledges and refuse to pay, then they should be made to 
understand, by a new excommunication, that the decree 



THE NOBLE IN TIME OF PEACE 315 

of the Lateran council relating to tournaments had lost none 
of its validity. 

Feudalism might conclude from this incident that, though 
tournaments were theoretically forbidden, it was easy in fact 
to make ecclesiastical authority shut its eyes, As with very 
many of the things of this world, it was a matter of money. 
One must not forget that the participation of the French 
nobility in the fourth crusade in 1200 was decided in a tour- 
nament at Ecry-sur-Aisne. The church could only approach 
the nobles with ease when they happened to be assembled in 
great numbers ; in order, then, for the tournament to be sanc- 
tified and legitimate, it was sufficient for the knights present 
to take the cross. 

* * 

The hunt in the great forests filled with deer was also 
a battle, a school of war. The idea of peace in the minds of 
men of the middle ages associated itself naturally with that 
of the chase. For proof of this we want nothing but this 
passage from Girart de Boussillon: ** Now the knights enter 
upon a long rest; this will be a propitious time for dogs, 
vultures, falcons, falconers, and huntsmen." On another 
page of the same poem we have King Charles Martel, when 
he had ceased making war on his vassals or on the Saracens, 
saying to his barons : ' ' Let us hunt by the river and in the 
woods; that is much better than staying at home." Along 
with the tournament, the chase was the pastime par excel- 
lence. And all the inhabitants of the chateau were hunters; 
the noble lady accompanied her husband and rode with a 
sparrow-hawk on her wrist. She was very well skilled in 
flinging the bird and in recalling it, and the success of the 
chase was often her work. As to the son of the castellan or 
baron, he hunted with his father and mother from the age 
of seven years; this was an important part of the physical 
education which was given him. 

The chase was not merely a way for knights and barons 
to escape inactivity ; it was a passion, an immoderate passion, 
often even such a mania that the church was obliged to con- 
demn it, and for many reasons : first, because the noble, pre- 
occupied with roving the forest, forgot even religious serv- 



316 SOCIAL FRANCE 

ices; and then, because the harshness of the law, which regu- 
lated the exercise of the chase and made seigniorial forests 
and game things sacred and inviolable, had in many respects 
become an intolerable scourge. The peasant did not have 
the right to defend himself or to protect his crops against the 
deer. In 1199, the inhabitants of the lie de Ee resolved to 
abandon their island, because of the tribulations which the 
rapidly multiplying deer caused them. Matters had come 
about to the point where they could neither reap their har- 
vests nor gather their grapes. The lord of the island was 
Raoul of Mauleon. The abbot of the monastery of Notre- 
Dame of Re, accompanied by the imploring inhabitants, went 
to him and begged him to renounce his right of the chase. 
Raoul consented not to leave any other game in the island, 
save hares and rabbits. But feudalism did not give some- 
thing for nothing ; the peasants were forced to pay the lord 
ten sous for each plot of vineyard and for each setter of land. 

For one noble who relaxed his hunting-law, how many 
others maintained it with fierce greediness? It cannot be 
said that, in this respect, the legislation of Philip Augustus 
was as hard as that of his contemporary, Henry II, the king 
of England; the latter, by his assize of 1184, had restored 
the forest ordinances of his predecessors, which provided that 
any man found guilty of hunting in the royal forests should 
have his eyes put out and his limbs mutilated. This made 
"William of Newburgh, an English chronicler, say that Henry 
II punished the killing of a deer as severely as the 
murder of a man. Still, the French baron no longer consid- 
ered the matter lightly, when, several years after the death 
of Philip Augustus, Enguerran of Coucy hanged three un- 
fortunate young nobles from Flanders, who had hunted upon 
his domains. Angered at this, the king committed the high 
baron to prison and did not release him until he had promised 
to pay a fine of ten thousand livres and make a pilgrimage 
to the Holy Land. 

It must be said, to be just to feudalism, that the chase was 
not merely a pleasure, a school of horsemanship, and of train- 
ing for war ; it was also an indispensable source of food sup- 
plies. These soldiers, hereditary hunters and great eaters, 
despised meat from the market. Generally they ate venison, 



THE NOBLE IN TIME OF PEACE 317 

served in quarters or in pies of plentiful width. If we are 
to believe our old poems (for the chronicles relate but little 
on this score), the favorite repasts of our feudal ancestors 
were those in which morsels of wild boar and bear alternated 
with roasts of swan and peacock, and with fish from the 
seigniorial fish-ponds, the whole basted with large bumpers 
of wine flavored with honey and spices. 

The chansons de geste of the period contain passages which 
show in a concrete manner what the chase was at that time 
and how strong was the passion with which the nobles de- 
voted themselves to it. The entire beginning of the poem 
Guillaume de Dole is filled with a description of a hunting 
party which lasted several days and of the meals on the 
grass, which were a necessary feature. But it is in Garin le 
Lorrain that the chase is described with the greatest wealth 
of detail. First of all, a seigniorial interior in time of peace : 

"Duke Begon was in the chateau of Belin with his wife, the 
beautiful Beatrix, daughter of Duke Milon of Blaye. He kissed her 
lips and face; the lady smiled at him sweetly. In the room before 
them played their two children; the older was named Garin and 
was twelve years old, while the second, Emaudin, was only ten. 
Six noble pages were playing games, running, skipping, laughing, 
and playing in competition with one another. The duke looked 
at them. He heaved a sigh. The beautiful Beatrix noticed it. 
* What are you troubled about, my Lord Begon,' said she, ' you so 
high, noble, and brave a knight? Are you not a rich man in the 
world? Gold and silver fill your coffers, the vair and the gray 
your wardrobes; you have goshawks and falcons on their perches; 
in your stables are coursers, palfreys, mules, and prize horses. You 
have prevailed over your enemies. Within a six days' journey from 
Belin, there is not a knight who would fail to come at your request. 
For what can you sigh ? ' " 

What ailed Duke Begon? He was not fighting any more; 
therefore, he was bored. There being no war to wage, he 
went hunting afar, under the pretext of paying a visit to his 
brother Garin: 

" * I have received news of the forest of Pevele and Vicogne in 
the freeholdings of Saint-Bertin. In that forest there is a wild boar, 
the strongest of which any one has ever heard tell ; I shall hunt him, 
and if it please God and I live, I shall carry his head to Duke Garin 
in order to give him a surprise.' " 



318 SOCIAL FRANCE 

No sooner said than done. 

"Begon loaded ten beasts with gold and silver, in order to be 
assured of good service and lodging everywhere. With him he took 
thirty-six knights, some good, skilled huntsmen, ten pairs of dogs, 
and fifteen servants to arrange the relay." 

We pass over the incidents of the journey. Begon was 
entertained at the chateau of Valentin by Berenger the Gray, 
* ' the richest commoner of the country. ' ' To him he disclosed 
his intention: 

"*I have been told of the forest of Pevele and of the great 
wild boar that hides there. I have resolved to go and hunt him and 
bring back his head to my dear brother, Duke Garin.' ' Sire,' 
answered his host, ' I know where the animal stays, and the covert 
where it takes shelter. To-morrow I can guide you to its home.' 
Transported with joy at these words, Begon took off the newly 
furred sable mantle which had come to him from Slavonia, saying, 
* Take it, my noble host, you shall come with me.' Berenger took 
the gift with a bow, and returning to his wife said to her: * See^ 
this beautiful present; there is a great advantage in serving a 
noble man.' 

" When the day broke, the chamberlains came to serve the duke, 
presenting him with a hunting-coat and tight boots. His gold spurs 
were fastened on ; he mounted his racing steed, hung his horn about 
his neck, seized his strong boar-spear in his hand, and set out with 
Rigaud and the thirty-six knights who were followed by the hunters, 
and ten trace of dogs. Thus, they crossed the Sehelt and entered 
the forest of Vicogne, led by Berenger the Gray. Soon they 
approached the spot where dwelt the boar. 

" At once began the baying and yelping of the dogs. They were 
unleashed; they bounded through the thicket and found the tracks 
where the boar had dug and rooted for worms. One of the dog- 
keepers unloosed Blanchart, the good blood-hound, and led him to 
the duke, who stroked him on his flanks, gently patted his head 
and ears, and then set him on the track. Blanchart disappeared 
and rapidly approached the animal's lair. It was a narrow place 
between the trunks of two uprooted oaks, sheltered by a rock and 
moistened by a thread of water running from a nearby spring. 
When the boar heard the baying of the blood-hound, he stood erect, 
spread his enormous feet, and, disdaining flight, wheeled around 
until, judging himself within reaching distance of the good hound, 
he seized it and felled it dead by his side. Begon would not have 
given Blanchart for one hundred marks of deniers. Not hearing hig 
barking any longer, he ran up with sword in hand ; but he was too 
late, the boar had gone. The knights dismounted from their horses 



THE NOBLE IN TIME OF PEACE 319 

and measured his hoof-prints, which were a good hand's breadth 
in length and width. * What an infernal demon ! ' said they. 

* There is no danger of our taking another for him.' They re- 
mounted and began the chase; soon the great forest re-echoed with 
the sound of their horns and the baying of the dogs. 

" The boar foresaw that he could not strive against so many ene- 
mies. He then sought refuge toward Gaudemont — this was the 
comer of the forest which served him as covert. Pressed here by 
the pack, he did what, perchance, no other boar would have dared 
attempt; he abandoned the covert, came into the open fields, crossed 
the country of Pevele, sprinkled with forests and isolated farms, 
and made thus a good fifteen leagues straight ahead, without mak- 
ing an instant's stop, and without a single detour." 

A boar making fifteen leagues in plain view is an exag- 
geration of the minstrel, one of those fanciful stories which 
find a place in even the truest of narratives. 

" The horses did not have strength enough to follow him ; the 
wearier ones were stopped by ponds, marshes, and water-courses; 
the good horse of Rigaut himself fell with weariness into the midst 
of a bog. Then, as the day began to wane, and the rain to fall, 
they begged the party to return to Valentin with their host. Food 
awaited them there. They sat down to the table, all deeply re- 
gretting the absence of Begon, whom they had left in the forest. 

" We have said that the duke rode an Arab steed presented by the 
king. There was not a more indefatigable courser in the world; 
when all the dogs refused to advance, Baucent seemed as fresh as 
in the morning when he left the chateau. So he followed the boar 
in his rapid flight. Perceiving that his three grayhounds were 
wearied, Begon lifted them up before him and took them in his 
arms until he saw them gather new strength, and, therefore, new 
ardor. Little by little, the other dogs overtook him, so that pres- 
ently he could collect them at the entrance of a clearing which 
showed them the boar's tracks. In an instant the forest resounded 
with their loud incessant baying. 

" Chased thus from Vicogne to Pevele, and from Pevele to 
Gohiere, the boar had finally come to bay in front of a thicket to 
await his enemies there. He began by refreshing himself in a pool; 
then raising his brows, rolling his eyes, and snorting, he bared his 
tusks, dashed upon the dogs, and ripped them open or ground them to 
pieces one after the other, with the exception of the three grayhounds 
that Begon had carried, which, more active than the others, could 
guard themselves against his terrible teeth. Begon arrived, and 
first of all saw his dogs stretched out dead, one near the other. 

* Oh, son of a sow,' he cried, ' it is you who have disemboweled 
my dogs, have separated me from my men, and have brought me 
I know not where. You shall die by my hand.' He dismounted 



320 SOCIAL FEANCE 

from his steed. At the outcry which he made, the boar, in spite 
of bushes and ditches, leaped upon him with the rapidity of a barbed 
aixow- Begon let him come on without stirring, and struck at his 
breast with the boar-spear which he was holding straight before him. 
The point pierced the heart and went out at the shoulder-joint. 
Mortally wounded, the boar swerved to one side, weakened and fell, 
never to rise again. Begon at once withdrew the spear from the 
wound whence issued rivers of black blood which the dogs lapped 
up before lying down side by side about the boar." 

This is a complete picture of a seigniorial chase in the 
time of Philip Augustus. The adventure, alas! turned out 
badly for the hunter. Isolated and lost in the woods, he was 
killed by the foresters in the service of one of his enemies. 
This kind of occurrence was not rare, in fact. The chase, 
as it was then practised, always held its dangers, though they 
were less, perhaps, than those one faced in tournaments. 



But one cannot always hunt. Tired out, the noble has 
returned to the donjon. To-morrow, if peace still lasts, what 
are to be his diversions ? There are at least two which again 
are violent exercises and are, as always, preparations for war. 
These are the " quintain " and the '' behourd." 

The quintain is a manikin covered with a hauberk and a 
shield and fastened to the top of a post. The play consists 
in the knight's dashing on the post, his horse at a gallop 
and his lance couched, and piercing the hauberk and buckler 
with a single lance-thrust. Sometimes, to increase the diffi- 
culty of the play, several armed manikins are arranged in a 
row, and the point is to run them through and overturn them 
all. This is the test which is ordinarily imposed upon new 
cavaliers and which takes place before the witnesses of dub- 
bing, the ladies. 

As to the behourd, it is simply a form of training for tour- 
naments and is a sort of fencing or tilt on horseback. The 
knights arrange themselves two by two, and one of them turns 
upon his partner, trying to pierce his shield with a lance. 
This sometimes becomes dangerous play, for one grows ex- 
cited in it, and in the heat of the strife forgets that it is an 
amusement. This very thing happened more than once, as 
the first verses of Oirart de Boussillon prove: 



THE NOBLE IN TIME OF PEACE 321 

" It was Pentecost, in the gay springtime. There was many a 
man with a brave heart. The pope came and preached. When 
the mass had been said the king repaired to his hall which was 
strewed with flowers. Below Girart and his fellows tilted at 
quintain and indulged in many an exercise. The king learned of 
it and forbade them to do it. He feared that from such games 
disputes might arise." 

A more complete description of quintains is that borrowed 
from the same poem, in the recital of the marriage of Fule. 

" On that day he dubbed a hundred knights, giving horses and 
arms to each one. Then in the meadow which bordered on Arsen 
he arranged for them a quintain equipped with a new shield and 
a strong and glittering hauberk. The young men ran their courses 
and other people came to watch them. . . . Girart saw that they 
were beginning to quarrel with each other, and in his heart he was 
much troubled. The crowd pushed toward the quintain. The hun- 
dred young men had made their trial ; some had succeeded, others had 
failed, but no one had more than indented the mail of the hauberk. 
The count called for his boar-spear. Droon brought it to him. It 
was the spear which Arthur of Cornwall had carried when 
formerly fighting in a battle in Burgundy. The count spurred his 
horse into the lists; he struck the target and made a hole of such a 
size that a quail could have flown through it. Then he broke and 
cut the shield under the ventail. There was no knight who equaled 
him or who could ever have sustained a struggle against him. 

" The count struck out with such force that, with a blow, he split 
one of the straps and tore off the other, all the while holding his 
weapon so firmly in hand that he again drew it out. And his men 
said, * What strength. When he makes war, it is not to take sheep 
or cattle; he is intent against his enemies; he has drawn much blood 
from their bodies.' " 

Still, the nobles of this time knew more peaceful pastimes. 
In the inclosures and pits they had animals, especially boars 
and bears, with which they amused themselves by making 
them fight. If it was warm, they sought the orchard — to 
drink, to play dice, chess, or even a sort of game of back- 
gammon. Or, perchance, they received strolling players, to 
whose songs and music they listened. Sometimes they had 
veritable orchestras, and the musical instruments of this 
period were not so rudimentary as one .might believe. They 
had violins or hurdy-gurdies, harps, double-basses or mono- 
chords, horns, trumpets, blowpipes, a kind of clarionet, tam- 



322 SOCIAL-* FRANCE 

bourines, and kettledrums. In the bad weather of winter, the 
castellan warmed himself under the hood of the immense fire- 
place or profited by his enforced inaction by having himself 
cupped and bled near the fire. For these rough tempera- 
ments were in need of frequent bleedings. Almost every 
month, the women as well as the men proceeded to the 
minutio — that is, the bleeding. When the unfortunate Queen 
Ingeborg of Denmark had been imprisoned in the chateau 
of Etampes by the order of Philip Augustus, one of the griev- 
ances against her husband, to which she referred with the 
most bitterness in her letters to Pope Innocent III, was that 
she was not any longer allowed to have a physician to bleed 
her regularly. 

As to the playthings of the children of nobility, they re- 
flected the bellicose spirit of the times: such as bows and 
crossbows, with which they amused themselves at killing 
birds. A manuscript, written at the end of the thirteenth 
century, has preserved for us a picture of one of their fa- 
vorite toys. It strangely resembles one which still serves 
the children of to-day — the jumping-jack, which is operated 
by means of two crossed cords. But these feudal jumping- 
jacks are naturally soldiers, which are armed from top to 
toe and fight each other with the great swords and shields in 
their hands. 

Pinally, the noble had one other diversion; a very costly 
one, it is true. This was to entertain guests at the chateau, 
such as pilgrims and wandering knights, and to give feasts 
in their honor. He was hospitable not only to the point of 
virtue, but even to the point of self-denial. Here we could 
again invoke the testimony of the chansons de geste; but we 
have too many of them. A historical document by Lambert, 
the cure of Ardres, outlines the life of Baldwin II, count of 
Guines and lord of Ardres. This count of Guines reigned 
from 1165 to 1205. He possessed to a great degree the most 
important of feudal qualities, that of liberality. He took 
pleasure in giving magnificent entertainment to all noted 
personages who crossed his territory — such as counts, knights, 
townsmen, archbishops, bishops, archdeacons, abbots, priors, 
provosts, archpriests, priests, canons, and clerics of every 
sort; and every entertainment was accompanied by sumptu- 



THE NOBLE IN TIME OF PEACE 323 

ous banquets. The cure of Ardres, who, in his desire to laud 
his master, makes the above enumeration, describes at length 
the solemn reception he tendered William of Champagne, 
archbishop of Reims and uncle of Philip Augustus, when that 
worthy in 1178 passed through Ardres on his way to Eng- 
land, to visit the tomb of Saint Thomas a Beeket. The feast 
was especially striking: there were innumerable dishes; wines 
from Cypress and Greece, flowing in floods, and flavored, 
as usual, with spices. With a shade of disdain, the chronicler 
adds that the French requested pure water, with which to 
weaken the drinks served them. But the count of Guines, 
ever faithful to his habits of good living, had secretly given 
an order to refill the jugs with an excellent white wine of 
Auxerre, which the clerics of the archbishop's suite took to 
be water and drank without distrust. But the deception was 
discovered. The archbishop was dangerously near being of- 
fended; he summoned the count and demanded a ewerful 
of water. Baldwin went out smiling, as if he would make 
reparation; but he amused himself before the servants by 
upsetting and trampling under foot all the water receptacles 
he could find. He then returned to the banquet-hall, to do 
honor to the archbishop, and, says the chronicler, appeared 
with a foolish sportiveness, pretending drunkenness before 
the young men and guests, who themselves had drunk more 
than was within reason. Disarmed by this good-humor, Wil- 
liam of Champagne promised the count to conform to all his 
wishes. 

We can take this merry personage as the comparatively 
peaceful type of lord with a domestic temperament. His bel- 
licose tastes appeared to be limited to the construction of 
chateaux. • It does not seem that he fought too much, or 
that he ever quitted his fief to make a pilgrimage to the Holy 
Land. He was content to remain in the midst of his vassals 
and serfs, to whom he rendered fair justice. Ordinarily, he 
possessed a more sensible spirit than did his peers. When his 
wife, Christiana of Ardres, died in childbirth, he was so filled 
with grief that he was on the verge of going insane. For 
several days, says the cure of Ardres, he recognized no one 
and scarcely knew what he was doing. His doctors would 
not permit any one to approach him. Nevertheless, he recov- 



324 SOCIAL FEANCE 

ered his reason, and consoled himself quickly enough; for his 
historian affirms that he became the father of several children 
in the year following his mourning. 

The cure of Ardres, indeed, presents him to us as he was, 
with his good qualities and his faults. For example, he 
reproaches him for his immoderate passion for the chase: 
" This lord," he says, " heard the hunter's horn more read- 
ily than the bell of the chaplain, and took more pleasure in 
throwing the falcon and applauding the exploits of his bird 
than in listening to a priest's sermon." Moreover, he did 
not hide the fact that his master was the greatest woman- 
hunter that he had seen *' since David and Solomon," and 
that " Jupiter himself could not be compared to him in this 
respect." After having given the names of several of his 
natural children, he adds: " Since I do not know the exact 
number, and since their father himself does not know them 
all by name, I will refrain from saying more about them. 
By trying to enumerate them, I fear I should weary the 
reader." The chronicle of a neighboring country, that of the 
abbey of Ardres, is more instructive. It tells us that thirty- 
three children of Baldwin II, legitimate or natural, were 
present at his funeral. 



CHAPTER X 
FEUDAL FINANCE AND CHIVALRY 

War, toTimaments, hunting, and receptions, open to all- 
comers, cost very dearly. In order to keep up this style 
of life, it was necessary to oppress subjects cruelly and take 
much booty from the enemy. Even so, one could not make 
both ends meet. And it is one of the striking and charac- 
teristic traits of feudal life that the noble, great and small, 
appears to be constantly in need of money, poor, on the watch 
for financial expedients, always indebted, and a prey of 
usurers of all kinds. This explains his rapacity and brig- 
andage, as the fruit of the instincts which impelled him. It 
was a deplorable reasoning in a circle: the barons robbed, 
pillaged, and killed because they needed money to pay for 
military expeditions, which cost a great deal and did not 
bring in enough. Unless one were a Philip Augustus or a 
Henry Plantagenet, able to operate on a large scale and to 
make vast conquests, one got nothing out of it. A seigniorial 
budget of this time is ordinarily a budget with a deficit. 

Nearly all important acts of the internal politics of Hugh 
III of Burgundy explain themselves by this penury, by the 
need of making money. He gives the county of Langres to 
the bishop of Langres, to the detriment of the ducal power, 
because he owed the latter an enormous sum. For five hun- 
dred francs he gave up the right of military service from the 
inhabitants of Dijon; his liberalities toward the Burgundian 
villages had the same cause. And his son, Eudes III, fol- 
lowed his example: he sold and pledged the rights and do- 
mains of the duchy to monasteries and burghers to secure 
money. One sees him, for example, in 1203 borrowing sixty 
livres from the canons of Beaune for a quarter of a year 
only; it was in December, and he promised to repay the sum 
on the first day of Shrove-tide. 

The lesser lords of Burgundy, the viscounts and castellans, 

335 



326 SOCIAL FRANCE 

were involved like their dukes. Money was necessary, espe- 
cially when they left for the crusades, and they placed their 
revenues and even their fiefs as security with the monks or 
the Jews. For, if the Christian would not or could not lend, 
the Jew was always ready to do so. In 1189, at the close 
of the third crusade, Andrew of Molesme pledged his fief 
for sixty livres to the abbey of Molesme; Robert of Ricey 
pledged his land of Gigny for ten livres; Girard, lord of 
Asnieres, ceded his land to the abbey of Jully for ten livres 
and a cow. In 1203, at the time of the fourth crusade, the 
lord of Nully was obliged to mortgage his land : he died, and 
his widow and his son were compelled to sell their patrimony 
to pay what he owed to the Jews. The viscount of Dijon, 
"William of Champlitte, borrowed three hundred livres from 
an Italian banker, — a Lombard, as they then called them, — 
Peter Capituli, on the revenues of his land of Champlitte. 
But he could no more pay the interest than he could repay 
the principal. The creditors demanded that the countess of 
Champagne seize his domains. The duke of Burgundy, Eudes 
III, had to intervene and redeem the lands of his vassal, by 
himself borrowing the amount of the debt from the Jews. 

All the great lords of France were in the same condition; 
even the counts of Champagne, for whom the fairs of Cham- 
pagne were a veritable gold mine. When Count Henry II 
left for Palestine, he borrowed money from ten bankers : they 
were not paid until after his death, by Thibaud III, his suc- 
cessor. Yet, after his arrival in the Holy Land, Henry II 
found himself in such straits " that it often happened," says 
his historian, Arbois de Jubainville, " that he got up in the 
morning not knowing how the people in his household and 
himself would be fed that day." Several times he was 
obliged to pledge his personal belongings to the tradesmen, 
who even in Champagne had refused to give him anything 
on credit. The Countess Blanche of Champagne, and even 
more her son, Thibaud IV, the writer of lays, were also in 
the hands of Christian or Jewish usurers. The Christians 
lent for two months, and the Jews for a week. The latter, 
after having demanded three deniers per week, were forced 
to content themselves with two, by virtue of an ordinance of 
1206, published jointly by the countess of Champagne and 



FEUDAL FINANCE AND CHIVALRY 327 

Philip Augustus. It was then decided that the Jews could 
lend at no higher rate than forty-three per cent, a year, not 
counting compound interest. With transactions of this na- 
ture it is intelligible how the financial difficulties of the counts 
of Champagne had merely become aggravated, and how in the 
month of May, 1223, Count Thibaud IV was reduced to tak- 
ing the gold table and the gold cross of Saint Stephen's 
church at Troyes to pledge them to the abbey of Saint-Denis. 
The monks of Saint-Denis lent him two thousand Parisan 
livres, nearly two hundred and fifty thousand francs in our 
money. Twenty-seven years after, in 1252, they were not 
yet paid. 

These are not isolated facts. In the other French regions 
the situation of the nobles was the same. Always without 
money, the legal means which they employed to acquire it 
only augmented their needs. A count of Saint-Pol, Hugh 
Candavene, leaving for the fourth crusade, wrote to one 
of his friends, in 1204, to tell him of the taking of Constanti- 
nople ; but first he told him of his personal affairs, which he 
had confided to his friend's care. 

" I am greatly obliged to you for having been so careful about 
my land. I tell you that since my departure I have received nothing 
from any one whatever, and I have only been able to live by what 
I myself can get, so that up to the day of the fall of Constantinople, 
we were all reduced to the most extreme want. I was obliged to 
sell my mantle for bread, but for all that I kept my horses and my 
arms. Since the conquest, I am enjoying good health, and am 
honored of every one. However, I am not without worry over the 
products of my land, for if God permits me to return home, I shall 
find myself much involved, and it will be necessary for me to pay 
my debts from the resources of my seigniory." 

Here is one lord who is careful about paying his creditors. 
But it is an error to think that all of his fellows took the 
same care. Most of them transmitted the task of paying their 
debts to their heirs and successors. Others merely refused 
to pay, or even essayed to get rid of their creditors conform- 
ably to aristocratic tradition — by violence, blows, or the 
prison. But this method did not always succeed. 

It is interesting to note that the church, which filled all 
the divers missions of medieval society, was still charged with 



328 SOCIAL FRANCE 

securing the execution of contracts of loans. She launched 
her thunder against the disloyal or reluctant debtor. Ex- 
communication then had the effect of arrest or imprisonment 
for debt. We will mention only two examples. The count 
of Champagne, Thibaud IV, having refused to pay three 
bankers, one of whom was a Jew, was excommunicated, and 
Champagne put under the interdict. The same baron, in a 
pressing need of money, borrowed an important sum from 
three Roman bankers, the Ilperni family. He was obstinate 
and would not pay, in spite of the repeated demands of the 
creditors and in spite of the repeated exhortations of the 
pope, who often came to the rescue of the Italian bankers. 
Thibaud found their insistence annoying. Not only did he 
not pay, but, profiting by the sojourn of one of the three 
Ilperni brothers in Champagne, he caused him to be seized, 
thrown into prison, put in irons, and threatened him with 
the gallows. The unfortunate man was obliged to give his 
debtor twelve hundred livres, which the count divided with 
his councilors, taking one thousand livres himself and giving 
them the balance. Upon complaint of the Roman bankers, 
the pope ordered Thibaud to restore the twelve hundred livres 
and to pay the previous debt; and declared that, in case of 
resistance, he would cause an excommunication, with lighted 
candles and sounding bells, to be published every Sunday and 
feast-day in all the churches of the county. Thibaud pre- 
tended to submit, acknowledged his debt by letters patent, 
and asked a delay. The time expired and he still refused 
to pay. The pope announced that, if the debt was not paid 
in full, he would put two of the most important cities of the 
county, Provins and Bar-sur-Aube, under interdict. We do 
not know how the affair ended. The count of Champagne had 
the bright idea of taking the cross, and a crusader became 
doubly holy. The pope relented and, instead of dealing 
rigorously with Thibaud, wrote him again, making an appeal 
to his good faith, a poor guarantee for the creditors. 

It did not always happen that pope or bishops intervened 
in their favor. When the creditor was a Jew^ things went 
very simply. A great baron did not trouble himself about 
the Jews. When their complaints became embarrassing, he 
issued a decree of expulsion against - them, according them 



FEUDAL FINANCE AND CHIVALRY 329 

permission to return upon making a payment of money. Or, 
if his iU-humor was more enduring, he decreed, with a 
stroke of the pen, that no interest should be paid them. The 
lesser lords understood this proceeding very well. Did the 
Jewish creditor press ,them too strongly? — they addressed 
themselves to the suzerain of the province, to the count or 
the duke, with a present, and obtained a letter of the kind 
which the duke of Normandy, king of England, in 1199 gave 
to the wife of the lord of Conches, Roger IV of Tosny. Here 
is the letter, the conciseness of which is admirable : 

" The king of England, duke of Normandy, to Henry of Grayen. 
We command you, that you cause Constance, Lady of Conches, to 
be quit of the debt of twenty-one silver marks, which she owes 
Benoit the Jew of VerneuU, upon the payment of the principal; this 
is why we desire that she do not pay interest on the debt. I, 
myself, witness, at Laigle, June the twentieth." 

It was difficult to deal in this fashion with Christians, 
especially when the Christians were monks of great abbeys 
or the citizens of a powerful commune, and especially when 
they belonged to the order of knights. At the time of Philip 
Augustus ' death, in 1223, Amauri, son and successor of Simon 
de Montfort, the hero of the Albigensian war, found himself 
reduced to a very critical situation by his poverty. , In order 
to keep up the struggle against the count of Toulouse, he 
had promised a wage to the knights of northern France. But 
this he had no means of paying, and the knights in question 
had no other way of securing the money owing them than 
locking up their debtor, their military chief, in a safe place 
and extorting five sous per day, more than the promised wage, 
from him. This same Amauri was so involved that he was 
forced to mortgage his own relatives : his uncle, Guy of Mont- 
fort, and several other nobles, were detained as prisoners at 
Amiens as security for a sum of four thousand livres, which 
the conquerors of Languedoc owed the merchants of that city. 
Here are the details, which explain why the house of Mont- 
fort, on the verge of bankruptcy, decided to transfer its 
rights over the conquered country to the king of France. 

It is not necessary to go to the lesser nobility for the type 
of prodigal noble who is indebted and reduced to the worst 



330 SOCIAL FRANCE 

expedients. One finds them even in royal families. The 
chronicler Geoffroi of Limousin, prior of Vigeois, says that 
the eldest son of the powerful Plantagenet King Henry II, 
whom contemporaries caU Henry the Young or the " young 
king of England," daily received a sum of fifteen hundred 
sous (fifteen thousand francs in our money) from his father 
as spending-money ; and his wife Margaret drew a daily in- 
come of five hundred sous (five thousand francs) from the 
treasury of England. A good revenue, egregius reditus, says 
the chronicler; but it was not sufficient for the young king, 
whose prodigality knew no bounds. His creditors were legion, 
and when in 1183, jealous of his brother, Richard the Lion- 
Hearted, he fell to quarreling with his father and fighting 
against him with the aid of highwaymen, this son of a king 
was by his wants obliged to become a chief of brigands. To 
pay his soldiers, he first levied a forced loan of twenty thou- 
sand sous on the burghers of Limoges; then he presented 
himself at the abbey of Saint-Martial and demanded the loan 
of the treasure of the monks. He forced his way into the 
cloister, drove out the majority of the monks, and opened 
the sanctuary. There he found a gold table from the altar 
of the Holy Sepulchre, and five statues of gold; the gold 
table of the high altar with its dozen golden statues of the 
apostles, a chalice of gold, and a silver vase of the most mar- 
velous workmanship ; some crosses and relics, etc., having alto- 
gether a value of fifty-two marks in gold and a hundred and 
three marks in silver. All these precious objects were val- 
ued, says the indignant prior of Vigeois who was an eye- 
witness, at twenty-two thousand sous, which was far below 
their value; for they did not take into account either the 
workmanship or the gold used in gilding the silver objects. 
Henry the Young carried the treasure away, after having 
given the monks a document, sealed with his seal, recognizing 
the debt. It is needless to say that he never paid it. Some 
months after, mortally wounded at the chateau of Martel, 
he died in the most abject poverty. The abbot of Uzerches 
was obliged to pay his funeral expenses. The people of his 
household died of hunger; they mortgaged even their mas- 
ter's horse to get food. Those who carried the body fainted 
from hunger, so that the monks of Uzerches had to revive 



FEUDAL FINANCE AND CHIVALRY 331 

them. One of the familiars of the young king said that he 
had even sold his hose for bread. 

The debts and the embarrassing condition of this heir- 
presumptive of the Plantagenet empire are recorded in 
Guillaume le Mareehal, which gives some curious details on 
this point: 

"In the chateaux, in the city, everywhere that he went, Henry 
the Young had such heavy expenses that when he began to think 
of leaving he did not know what to do. He had distributed horses, 
clothing, and food so freely that his creditors wept: three hundred 
livres to this person, one hundred to another, and two hundred to 
a third. * That comes to six hundred,' said the scribes ; * who will 
become surety ? ' ' My lords, here no one has money,' answered the 
men of the prince ; * but you will be paid within a month.' * By our 
faith,' said the burghers, ' if Marshal takes the debt in hand just as 
it is, we will not worry, and we will consider ourselves paid.' " 

This was perhaps too much confidence, for the earl of 
Pembroke, William Marshal, the intimate friend and devoted 
councilor of the young king, was himself not very rich. We 
know that he was obliged to take booty in tournaments; he 
even occasionally robbed travelers on the highways. In one 
of the previous chapters we read how he fell in with a monk, 
who was eloping with a woman, and appropriated all the 
money which the fugitives had about them, an act of brig- 
andage which his biographer considers as a legitimate windfall 
and a proper pleasantry. 

Marshal then set out to take the body of the unhappy 
prince to his father. King Henry II. One of the creditors 
of the young king, Sancho, probably a Basque or Navarrese, 
was the chief of his retainers. He was creditor for a con- 
siderable sum. 



" He knew that he would not be paid unless he used some 
artifice. He knew that the young king loved William Marshal well, 
and placed more faith in him than in all others. He spurred his 
horse before Marshal, and seized his horse by the bridle. * I have 
seized you and I lead you away; come with me, Marshal.' Marshal 
asked why. 'Why? You know very well. I want you to pay 
me the money which your lord owes me.' Marshal then understood 
that he was not being forced, and he did not try to resist. Sancho 
said to him : ' I do not want to lose what is due me ; that is why 



332 SOCIAL FRANCE 

I do not let you go. But I intend to give you the advantage. You 
shall be free for a hundred marks.' ' Seignior/ answered Marshal, 
'what are you saying? This game would be too bitter for me. I 
am only a poor squire, who scarcely possesses a furrow of earth; 
truly I do not know where to find so much money. But do you 
know what I will do? I give you my word of honor that I will 
return to you as a prisoner, and will come to your prison on the day 
you assign.' And Saneho said : ' Certainly, that is your right ; and 
I willingly grant it to you, for you are a loyal knight.' " 

After having signed the agreement, Marshal continued his 
journey and finally came to the presence of the king of 
England, Henry II, to whom he delivered the body of his 
son. Here the scene has a certain grandeur: 

, " The sad truth was bitter to the old king, for this was the son 
he had loved most. But he was of so courageous a heart that he 
sought to appear unmoved by the most troublesome news. Marshal, 
angry at this affected indifference, began to recount how his son 
had fallen ill, how he had suffered martyrdom, how he was truly 
repentant, how he had borne his great sorrow and great misfortunes 
with admirable patience. ' 0, that God had saved him/ said his 
father very simply, for his sorrow oppressed his heart more than 
he wished to show, but his great grief kept him silent. ' What shall 
I do, Sire?' asked Marshal. 'Marshal, I have only one thing to 
say. You will go with your lord and take his body to Rouen, as 
you had intended.' ' Sire,' said Marshal, ' that is impossible. I 
have given my word to become a prisoner in Sancho's prison. You 
know him well, he to whom your son owed so much money. It is 
the truth, but for one hundred marks he will release me.' 

" The king then called one of his familiars, Joubert of Pressigny. 

* Go find Saneho for me. Tell him to grant Marshal time for the 
payment of the hundred marks.' Joubert went with Marshal; the 
latter rode pensively. ' Marshal,' said Joubert, ' what makes you 
so downcast ? ' Marshal answered : ' Truly, I have enough to think 
of, if thinking of one's troubles is of any use in relieving them. The 
death of my lord, then this debt with which I am charged, trouble 
me, for I have not the means to pay it. I have indeed the right 
to be troubled.' ' Marshal,' returned Joubert, ' would you be thank- 
ful to the person who managed things so as to relieve you of this 
worry? Well, I assure you that you will be rid of your debt.' 

* Dear Sire,' said Marshal, * I would be very grateful to whoever 
would render me this service, if such good luck could come to me.' 
' Then let me arrange the matter. You have never had the money ; 
it is not just that you should pay it. Do not worry, I will undertake 
this affair and try to bring it to a good end.' 

" Our two companions arrived at the home of Saneho, and greeted 



FEUDAL FINANCE AND CHIVALRY 333 

him in behalf of the king. Joubert told him at once that the king 
had assumed the payment of the debt resting on Marshal. * You 
promise it ? ' said the rfetainer. * Yes, truly.' ' Then it is done.' 
The two knights took leave without delay. Presently Sancho went 
to the king and demanded his hundred marks. The king thought 
that the retainer had made a mistake. ' What hundred marks, my 
good friend ? ' said he. * The debt, Sire, which you took upon your- 
self to liberate Marshal.' ' Some one has misinformed you,' said the 
king. * I never undertook anything of the kind, and I am bound 
in no way. I only asked a delay of you.' Sancho, greatly worried, 
took an oath upon the glory of God : ' Joubert, speaking for you, 
told me that you would assume the debt.' They at once sent for 
Joubert. * How is it,' said the king to him, * that this man claims 
this money from me ? ' ' Sire, I will willingly tell you. In short, 
I told him on your behalf, that you would assume the debt. You 
said as much here; even here I heard it. I have proof of what I 
say.' Then the king said : * 0, well, so be it ! Let the debt be 
charged to me. My son has cost much more than that and would 
to God that I could still pay for him.' His eyes closed with grief 
and the tears flowed from them ; but it was not for long." 

The young king of England, in short, with his foolish 
prodigality realized the ideal of the knights of his time. In 
the class of barons and castellans a deficit and debts were not 
a disgrace. On the contrary, it was the sign of nobility ; and 
the prodigality, which in the eighteenth century brought 
down lettres de cachet and imprisonment on the sons of a 
family, and to-day subjects them to a guardian, was in the 
time of Philip Augustus more than an elegance: it was a 
virtue. It was the current conception of feudalism, and 
especially of the poets and minstrels, who lived at its cost. 
This virtue was called ** largess." It is celebrated in a thou- 
sand passages of the minstrels' lays. ** Be generous to all; 
for the more you give the greater honor you shall obtain, 
and the richer you shall be. He is not a true knight who 
is too covetous," says the author of Doon de Mayence. 
** An avaricious king is not worth a farthing," we read in 
Ogier le Danois. There is the same sentiment in the 
chanson of Garin, ** No avaricious prince can keep his land; 
there is injury and grief while he lives." It is a kind of 
commonplace among the troubadours and trouveres to com- 
plain that the lords of their time were no longer so liberal 
as in former centuries. The author of the Chanson de la 



334 SOCIAL FRANCE 

croisade des Albigeois, William of Tudela, says of himself 
at the beginning of his work: 

" Master William composed this song at Montauban, where he was. 
Truly, if he had good luck, if he were rewarded as are so many of 
the common players, so many of the cheap fellows, surely no talented 
man of courtesy would fail to give him a horse or a Breton palfrey, 
to carry him easily over the sand, or raiment of silk or velvet; but 
we see the world going so decidedly to the bad that rich men — a 
worthless lot, — who should be gracious will not give the value of a 
button. As for me, I do not ask them for the value of a coal, or 
for the sorriest cinder they have in the hearth. May God and the 
Holy Mother Mary Who made the sky and air, confound them ! " 

We need not accept everything the poets of the middle 
ages say: they all say the same thing at all times. Their 
theme vras that feudal lords vrere never generous enough ; they 
were insatiable. In fact, all the nobles of this time were 
lavish. Public opinion did not permit them to live meanly, 
and they practised the virtue of largess with the utmost non- 
chalance. To them war was the occasion of immense expense, 
and we have seen that war never ceased. But peace was no 
less costly, for it involved receptions, religious and military 
fetes, marriages, and knightings. But there were no fetes 
in the middle ages without prolonged feasting, without the 
distribution of clothing, furs, money, and horses. The higher 
his rank, the more a man gave to friends, vassals, players, 
and all-comers : so that money slipped from the hands of our 
knights and never remained in them. 

To get a good idea of what war then cost a baron, one 
should read the minute biography of Baldwin V, count of 
Hainault, father-in-law of Philip Augustus, written by Gil- 
bert of Mons. There was not a year when this lord did not 
make several military expeditions, usually at his own ex- 
pense, whether on his own account, as a feudal duty, or to 
fulfil the obligation of vassalage. In this chronicle, so im- 
portant for its accuracy of detail, each page contains such 
phrases as these : * ' The count of Hainault, in order to go to 
war, to remain there, and to return, was under arms five 
weeks ; his expenses were one thousand eight hundred and fifty 
silver marks, full weight." The allusion is to the campaign 
which took place in December of the year 1181, but the war 



FEUDAL FINANCE AND CHIVALRY 335 

burst out anew after Epiphany of 1182. There had been 
only a short truce for Christmas, the first of the year, and 
Twelfth Day. The new campaign lasted almost until Lent. 
It took six weeks, says Gilbert of Mons, and, when the count 
of Hainault returned home, he had a new debt of one. thou- 
sand six hundred marks of silver. The summer of 1182 
passed without war, an extraordinary thing for Baldwin V. 
But in the autumn he went to a tournament, and there he 
had bad luck. While he was engaged in the joust, some men 
of Louvain, subjects of the duke of Brabant, stole all his 
baggage, clothes, wagons, beasts of burden, and saddle- 
horses. Baldwin in his rage declared war on the duke of 
Brabant. A campaign ensued in October and November of 

1182. It was interrupted by a peace, valid until Epiphany, 

1183. During the peace the count of Hainault attended an- 
other tournament held between Braine and Soissons. He 
did not participate, but contented himself with recruiting 
knights and mercenaries. In March, 1183, he made war in 
France against Philip Augustus on behalf of Philip of Alsace, 
count of Flanders, his brother-in-law. In the spring of 1184, 
he was obliged to appear at the grand court at Mainz, where 
Frederick Barbarossa assembled all the princes of the empire 
and nearly seventy thousand knights. As usual, the barons 
vied with each other in splendor and prodigality: who could 
collect the largest number of knights under his banner, pitch 
the most and richest tents in the plain, and throw the great- 
est amount of money and gifts to the common soldiers and 
the minstrels? After this ruinous fete in July and August 
of 1184, the count of Hainault again found himself at war. 
He carried on a bloody struggle against the count of Flan- 
ders and the duke of Brabant, who had joined to crush him. 
And so it continued to the year 1195, in which he died. 
Baldwin ceased warring, attacking, and being attacked only 
because death took his weapons out of his hands. 

One wonders how these men could endure the perpetual 
traveling, the enormous fatigue, and the interminable strug- 
gles; and wonders, especially, how they could support them- 
selves in pecuniary matters. Their endurance seems to have 
had no limits, but their treasure was not inexhaustible. The 
military resources of their own fiefs were not sufficient for 



336 SOCIAL FEANCE 

them to lead armies into campaigns so often as they did. 
They had recourse to mercenaries, whom they recruited from 
all sides. There is a curious page in the chronicle of Gilbert 
of Mons which tells us what the Count Baldwin paid certain 
of his auxiliaries; to one, six hundred livres, assigned on a 
village near Valenciennes; to another, four hundred livres, 
on a village of Brabant; to another, land in fief and twenty 
livres. The latter became lord of Belaing near ValencienneSj 
with a revenue of seven hundred livres; the others had fiefs 
of less importance yielding thirty and twenty livres. Still 
the count of Hainault did not satisfy them with this assign- 
ment of fiefs. He had from time to time to make presents 
of horses, clothing, and cash in order to preserve the zeal 
and devotion of this paid soldiery. 

Compare with this page of history certain passages from 
Girart de Boussillon, and we will see that it deals with the 
same time, the same customs, and the same men. In the 
following passage the poet seems to be merely a commentator 
on the historian; 

" Girart seated himself under a laurel, and having sent for his 
councilor, Fule, had gold and deniers brought to him, likewise 
mules, palfreys, and coursers with which to pay the soldiers. He 
wrote a hundred letters, sealed them, and summoned the knights 
throughout the land. To those who desired money Girart gave it. 
There were shortly four thousand of them who directed their way 
toward Dijon. He sent his messengers for the Burgundians as far 
as the mountains, for the Bavarians and Germans, even to Saxony. 
Wherever he knew of a good warrior he sent for him, making him 
promises of rich gifts." 

Further on we find the theory of obligatory prodigality, 
especially toward poor knights, set forth. The seignior must 
maintain them in peace as well as in war. 

"The young warriors said: 'The war is over; there will be no 
more skirmishes, no more wounded knights, no more broken shields.' 
' That none be discouraged at it,' said FuIc [one of the heroes 
of the poem] , ' I shall willingly give them a living and clothing if 
I cannot give them more.' Fulc spoke to Girart and to King 
Charles Martel. * Now,' said he, ' see to it that each of you counts 
and rich barons gives the poor knights enough to assure their sub- 
sistence. Summon them to be enrolled for the defense of the land, 



FEUDAL FINANCE AND CHIVALRY 337 

as has become the custom. And if there is an avaricious rich man, 
a felon at heart whom the maintenance and gifts cost too much he 
shall be deprived of his fief, and it shall be given to the valiant. For 
hoarded treasure is not worth a coal.' " 

Count Baldwin (to, return to history) was not one of the 
stingy rich, for reading Gilbert of Mons we see what 
happened : 

" At Easter, 1186, he assembled the council of his secretaries and 
his familiars in his chateau at Mons. There the condition of his 
finances was made known; it was disquieting enough. His personal 
expenses, the cost of maintenance, and the pay of the soldiers 
amounted to a considerable sum. The deficit was forty thousand 
Valenciennes livres. The count of Hainault then, in spite of himself 
and with regret, decided to resort to an extreme measure: he bur- 
dened the inhabitants of his county with extraordinary taxes. In 
seven month he collected enough to pay almost all his debts." 

What a time this was when the rulers could employ such a 
convenient method of almost instantly balancing their budgets ! 
It was enough to squeeze the sponge: that is, the exploitable 
subject, the peasant, and the burgher. But all feudal barons, 
especially the lesser ones, did not have this resource. They 
remained in debt and accumulated deficits until finally they 
had to sell their fiefs. Thereafter they vanished by going on 
the crusade: it was a method of liquidation then in com- 
mon use. 

• * 

We would, however, like more precise and accurate in- 
formation about the financial situation of the noble class. 
We lack contemporary accounts and budgets: it would be 
especially interesting to have the book of receipts and ex- 
penditures of one of these barons who maintained their 
splendor and threw their money out of the window. Un- 
fortunately, for the time which we are studying, this kind 
of document scarcely exists. We have the accounts of the 
household of Philip Augustus for the year 1202 and 1203, 
and they are far from being prodigal; and, of seigniorial 
budgets, we possess only a fragment of the accounts of 
Blanche of Navarre, countess of Champagne, covering the 
years 1217, 1218, and 1219. However, the study of these ac- 



338 SOCIAL FRANCE 

counts, incomplete and mutilated as they are, is instructive 
and one can draw certain general conclusions from them, for, 
except in proportion, the life of a king or a high baron of 
this time was not different from that of an ordinary seignior. 
In all the grades of the hierarchy the nobles had the same 
instincts, the same passions, the same needs to satisfy. They 
drew their money from practically the same sources, and 
spent it in about the same fashion. But the accounts of 
Blanche of Champagne, in the first place, reveal that this 
noble dame, frequently short of money, contracted many 
debts, for they contain abundant reference to the payment of 
interest. The bankers lent to her for a rather short time, 
generally for two months, at most for six, and at a rate of 
twenty-five per cent, interest, the relatively moderate rate 
of Christian bankers. We have seen that the Jews ordinarily 
lent at forty-three per cent. But as usury was officially in- 
terdicted and prohibited, especially to members of the church, 
the keeper of accounts was careful to represent the payment 
of the enormous interest as a reimbursement for expenses 
which the lender had had. 

The county of Champagne was, like all fiefs, in a state of 
war, because the countess, in the name of her minor son, 
young Thibaud IV, had to defend herself against the dan- 
gerous and implacable rival, Erard of Brienne. The ex- 
penses of war, therefore, have a very important place in the 
accounts: putting the fortifications of Champagne and Brie 
into a state of defense ; cleaning the moats, repairing of walls 
of villages; money to distribute among the paid soldiers; 
food to send to the troops at Vassy; sums to transport pris- 
oners into a safe place, for lost arms, for spies, for horses, 
for the oxen which were sent to the army at Clermont and 
were led astray, etc. It was not only war which cost money ; 
it was necessary to negotiate, to maintain solicitors and am- 
bassadors, to sustain numerous processes at Rome or at Paris. 
And then there were the expenses of traveling allowed to 
agents and lawyers and to ordinary messengers who were 
sent to Italy, to Spain, to Philip Augustus, there to repre- 
sent the countess and her son and to defend their interests. 
And then there is the chapter of presents, of gifts, of alms, 
and all the expenses of " largess." Political presents: first. 



FEUDAL FINANCE AND CHIVALRY 339 

two hundred cheeses of Brie sent to Philip Augustus, a 
quantity of armor sent to the Emperor Frederick II, bales 
of materials and clothing sent to Rome to wheedle the pope 
or his cardinals ; in Champagne itself, eternal gifts of money, 
furs, and robes to clerics, women, and nobles ; alms for widows 
and sick servants, and, finally, clothing for newly created 
knights. 

The more detailed accounts of Philip Augustus are stiU 
more deservedly a mine of interesting information. The ex- 
penses of war naturally predominate: it is the budget of a 
conqueror. Every line deals with the payment of knights, 
retainers, mounted and afoot, of crossbowmen, with buying 
and transportation of munitions and of rations for armies 
and garrisons ; with the construction or repairing of towers, of 
chateaux, and of walls. Then come the expenses relating to 
hunting, to falconry, and to the equipment of the chase; 
alms given to religious establishments and the emoluments 
granted to royal officers ; gifts of clothing and of furs to the 
queen, the prince royal, and the children of the latter; the 
maintenance of the wardrobe of the king himself; pensions 
given to noble lords and ladies; and innumerable presents 
of money and horses to persons of all classes. It was espe- 
cially at the great fetes of the year — Christmas, Easter, and 
Pentecost — that clothing, " robes " as they then called them, 
were distributed to the royal family and the members of the 
entourage. After this partial account, which touches only 
two years, it is difficult to determine whether the budget of 
Philip Augustus was better balanced than that of the ma- 
jority of greater and lesser lords. We may, probably, safely 
answer in the negative as far as the period before the great 
conquests — that is, before 1204, the year in which Normandy 
was taken — ^is concerned; for it was exactly during this 
first half of the reign that the historians mentioned the vio- 
lent exactions practised by Philip Augustus to the detri- 
ment of a certain number of bishops and abbots. They all, like 
the monk Rigord, considered his acts a series of religious 
persecutions. It was simply the effect of a deficient budget. 
The king met it as he could by forced loans from the treas- 
ure of churchmen, who showed themselves more or less re- 
fractory. During all the ancien regime this remained an 



340 SOCIAL FEANCE 

essential of monarchical tradition: when the king had no 
more money, he seized it with consent or by force wherever 
he found it in the pocket of the cleric ; which never prevented 
him from being considered the eldest son of the church, and 
never diverted the church from being the best supporter of 
monarchy. So far as he could, the baron followed the king's 
example. 



As in the budget of the countess of Champagne, some 
articles of the royal accounts for 1202 and 1203 relate to the 
gifts which were bestowed on new knights. This is a feature 
of the times, a consecrated usage to which we must now give 
our attention. The fetes of chivahy were, perhaps, the oc- 
casion of the greatest expense of French nobility. They 
voluntarily ruined themselves to make a display of gener- 
osity and luxury, and here poetry and history again agree 
perfectly in the information they give us. 

Let us consider history first. The cure Lambert, chronicler 
of the county of Guines and the seigniory of Ardres, de- 
scribes the solemnities connected with the knighting of the 
young Arnoul, son of Count Baldwin II, in 1181. The cere- 
mony was to take place on Pentecost. Baldwin had convoked 
his sons, his natural children, and all his friends to his court. 
He himself dubbed his eldest son knight by dealing him the 
light blow, or rather striking him with his fist on the nape 
of the neck, which was the principal sign of knighting. There 
was no participation by the church in this important cere- 
mony. If she had had a part, the cure Lambert would have 
spoken of it. Here we have the purely feudal chivalry, mili- 
tary and secular, of ancient tradition. The solemnity was 
joyously celebrated by a feast, at which the most delicate 
foods and the choicest wines were served. And the cure of 
Ardres, in recollection of the sumptuous love-feast, at which 
he no doubt had done his whole duty, naively exclaims that 
the guests endeavored to give themselves a foretaste of the 
eternal joys of paradise. He describes the knight, newly 
clothed in his armor, advancing into the midst of the as- 
semblage and distributing handfuls of gold and precious 
objects to the crowd of domestics, clowns, players, buffoons. 



FEUDAL FINANCE AND CHIVALRY 341 

minstrels, men, and women, who were not lacking at this 
feast. 

" He gave to all who asked in such a way that the memory of his 
generosity must remain forever engraved upon their memories. He 
gave all that he possessed and could acquire. He gave even to the 
point of folly, making gifts, great and small; he gave not only 
what he possessed, but also what he did not own, what he had 
borrowed from others. He kept scarcely anything for himself." 

The next day the procession threaded the streets of Ardres 
to the sound of bells. Monks and clerics chanted hymns to 
the Trinity, sang the praises of the newly invested knight, 
and, in the presence of the people who shouted and leaped 
for joy, the knight made his way into the principal church. 
" For two years from that day," adds the chronicler, 
* ' Arnoul traveled about the country and frequented all tour- 
naments, not without the aid of his father," which, without 
a doubt, means that the treasure of the count of Guines ex- 
perienced a considerable drain. 

The consequence of this chivalrous extravagance was that 
the young Arnoul, a little later, reached the end of his 
resources. He then no longer felt any scruples on the choice 
of financial expedients. Some years after his knighting the 
kings of France and England decided to take decisive steps 
to succor the Holy Land. All of the nobles took the cross, 
and the general tax, known as the Saladin Tithe, was im- 
posed on all persons who did not. Arnoul, like all the other 
lords, took the cross and made a vow of pilgrimage; but he 
carefully avoided setting out for Jerusalem. He was a prac- 
tical man : he preferred to remain in his fief and lead a life 
of ease. He collected the tithe, but, instead of devoting it to 
the purpose of the crusade, instead of even employing it to 
aid the poor, he used it for his own satisfaction. He was the 
pauper: the money for the crusades enabled him to figure 
brilliantly at all tournaments, at banquets, and to buy 
expensive clothing. And what remained of it, says the 
chronicler indignantly, he gave to any one who happened 
along. He renewed his prodigality : to one he gave a present 
of a hundred marks, to another a hundred livres; to one he 
gave the silver chalice of his chapel, to another the silver 



342 SOCIAL FRANCE 

pyxes, and to yet another the silver plate. He gave every- 
thing away — clothing, hangings, tapestries: he gave even the 
horses provided for the expedition to the Holy Land. 

To give largess at the expense of the crusade was over- 
stepping all bounds, and the good cure of Ardres, in spite of his 
respect for his masters, dared to qualify the proceeding as 
"irreverent " and " impudent." 

In the chronicle of Gilbert of Mons chivalry also appears 
as an occasion of boundless expense. In 1184, the grand 
court held at Mainz by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa 
was the scene of many military investitures. The new knights, 
their friends, and all the lords of high rank rivaled each 
other in prodigality. " It was not only," says Gilbert of 
Mons, "to do honor to the emperor and his sons that the 
princes and the other nobles ruined themselves in largess: 
it was also for the glory of their own names." Five years 
later, Count Baldwin V of Hainault celebrated the knighting 
of his own son at Speyer. The knights, clerics, and domestics 
of his court received a goodly number of saddle-horses, pal- 
freys, and coursers from him. Minstrels of both sexes were 
impartially showered with gifts. At the court of France, 
under similar circumstances, money flowed in streams. In 
1209, Prince Louis, the eldest son of Philip Augustus, was 
invested with knighthood in the great assembly of Compiegne. 
" On the holy day of Pentecost," says the chronicler, Wil- 
liam of Armoriea, " Louis received the baldric of knight- 
hood from the hand of his father with such solemnity, in the 
presence of such a concourse of grandees and royalty, before 
such a multitude of men, and with such an abundance of 
provisions and gifts, that to this day nothing to equal it has 
been seen. ' ' On the same day one hundred other young men 
were knighted, says an English chronicler. It is to be re- 
gretted that the middle ages have not transmitted to us an 
account of the expenses of the knighting of the son of 
Philip Augustus, as they have left us an account of the 
expenses of the dubbing of a brother of Saint Louis and a 
son of Philip the Hardy in 1237 and 1267, respectively: in 
them one would already have seen the evidence of royal 
prodigality, money given to the minstrels, horses, armor, and 
robes lined with ermine and sable lavished on new knights; 



FEUDAL FINANCE AND CHIVALRY 343 

gilded girdles, silver cups, and jewels offered to the ladies; 
the heavy expenses which the pitching of tents and the sump- 
tuous preparations for the banquet entailed. 

If historical texts of this period do not give us all de- 
sirable details about the ceremony of investiture and the fetes 
of chivalry, we may look for them in contemporary chansons 
de geste. These often speak of the ceremonies of knighting 
and of the largess which accompanied them. The material 
which we find in them agrees perfectly with that found in 
the chronicles. Without doubt, the feudal poets in this in- 
stance simply described the facts which they had before 
their eyes. 

In the ballad Garin le Lorrain there is a brief but ex- 
pressive notice on the knighting of Begon. Begon presented 
himself to King Pepin : 

" * Sire,' said he, ' we are of an age to carry arms : make four 
knights of my brother Garin, Fromont, William, and me. We 
greatly desire it.' ' I consent,' responded the king. And immedi- 
ately requesting arms and rich clothing he commenced by dubbing 
Garin, then Begon, then Fromont and William. Rich was the dis- 
tribution of the vair and gray, and grand was the feast. After the 
'banquet they emerged from the palace. The new knights mounted 
their coursers, took their shields, and tilted for a long time. Begon, 
whose shield was ornamented with fine gold, rode his course with 
the rapid certainty of a winged falcon." 

Further on the description becomes more detailed, and at 
the same time more complete. The story concerns the knight- 
ing of Fromondin, son of Fromont, at the very height of the 
war, fought under the walls of Bordeaux, between the two 
great factions of the song, the men of Bordeaux and Lorraine. 
The uncles of the young man, Bernard of Naisil and Baldwin 
of Flanders, admired his deportment. 

" * Just see,' said they, * what a bold nephew we have ! Why do 
we not ask the mighty Fromont to knight him.' ' We could not do 
better,' replied the Fleming. On rising from the table they went 
to find Count Fromont. ' Your son,' said Bernard to him, * has 
become large, strong of arm, and deep of chest; is it not time to 
make him a knight? It is certain that he will know how to cross 
a lance and fight our mortal enemies better than any one else; and 
if you wait until judgment-day, you will never see him more fit 



344 SOCIAL FRANCE 

to be knighted.' ' These are strange words,' answered Fromont ; 

* Fromondin is still too young to support the weight of arms.' ' 0, 
do not say that,' said Bernard; 'reflect that you are getting old, 
that your hair is becoming white, that the time for your ease is 
coming; rest you then, and leave to yoiir son the burden of war.' 
Fromont could not hear these words without reddening with anger. 

* You provoke me, Su-e Bernard,' said he, ' To hear you talk, I am 
an old man in my dotage. I can still mount my horse well enough, 
however, and I have no need of any one to defend my rights. To- 
morrow we shall have a pitched battle, and I will meet you; and 
these are my conditions : that he of us who shall be worsted shall 
have his spur cut off next the heel with a sharp sword.' * Good 
nephew,' said Bernard, ' many thanks ; I had rather not. And, 
please God, I did not intend to provoke you. I spoke to you thus 
with good intention, and because your friends asked me to do so.' 

* You wish it ? ' said Fromont. ' Ah, well ! So be it ; I give my 
consent.' " 

This first scene, in which the resistance of the father is so 
vividly pictured, is not pure fancy. There is something de- 
cidedly human in this reluctance of the knight who does not 
wish to abdicate and retards the knighting of his son as much 
as he can, because to him it is the sign of advancing age 
and of the physical decadence which threatens him. And, 
furthermore, it must not be forgotten that for the young 
lord knighting meant his majority, emancipation, and part- 
nership in the paternal sovereignty; his entry into a partial 
possession of the future heritage. It is not surprising that 
the father hesitated and put off this maturity as long as he 
could. Historical fact here confirms what poetry relates. It 
will be enough to mention the case of Philip Augustus, a 
very suspicious father, who for the longest time possible de- 
ferred the admission of his heir, Prince Louis, to knighthood. 
Louis of Prance was not knighted until he was over twenty- 
two years of age, and yet the king, before consenting to the 
knighting, took all sorts of precautions and exacted rigorous 
promises from his son, in the form of a treaty, which has 
come down to us in the registers of the chancellery : to 
employ in his service only knights and retainers sworn to the. 
king, never to borrow money from the communes and 
burghers without paternal consent, and even to hold certain 
seigniories, from which he was to have the revenues as feudal 
vassal and under a perpetually revocable lien. 



FEUDAL FINANCE AND CHIVALRY 345 

The Fromont of the poem did not resist so long, and he 
did not impose heavy conditions on his son. We return to 
the poem. The knighting of Fromondin is decided upon. 
The young man has returned to his lodgings. Fifty vessels 
are filled with water; it is the knightly bath, an ordinary 
hygienic measure which the church later converted into a 
symbolic purification. 

" The first is for the young noble, the others for the young varlets 
who are to be armed with him. The chamberlains bring in robes 
and garments of velvet. The squires lead the mules, coursers, 
palfreys, and prize horses. Fromont had sent his son Baueent his 
own steed, the one he loved best, with a saddle which came from 
Toulouse. Fromondin in mounting leaped from solid earth (that is 
to say, without stirrups) with such energy that he went too far and 
jostled Bernard of Naisil. ' Oh, Sire,' he said laughingly to his 
uncle, * You shall Uve with me; I pray you.' 'Gladly,' answered 
Bernard, ' but on condition that you do what I wish : you shall 
delight in spurring the horse, in distributing your honors to noble 
knights, and in giving the vair and gray to the poor. I cannot 
repeat it too often: a true prince exalts himself by giving largess; 
and if he is avaricious every day of his life is detrimental to others ! ' 
*I will do your pleasure,' answered Fromondin." 

It was also decided that he was to bear his first arms in 
a tournament : that is, in a real battle, more bloody in Garin 
than in reality. 

The day of the tournament arrived. Although the poet 
does not expressly say so, Fromondin doubtless passed the 
night in the church, in the vigil of arms, for he is described 
as returning to his lodgings after having heard the morning 
mass, taking light refreshment, and then going to bed to 
sleep. 

" The day dawned beautifully and the sun beamed. Count Fro- 
mont was the first to leave his bed. He opened his window, and the 
fresh brilliance struck him full in the face. In a moment he was 
dressed and shod. He went completely armed from his room, 
ordered his horse, and rode through all the quarters of the town 
waking the knights. He came to his son's lodgings and found the 
young man asleep in his bed. Fromont called Bernard : ' Come,* 
said he, * see my son. He should have been given a chance to get 
bigger and stronger, but he must be clothed in the white hauberk ! ' 
And then in a loud voice, ' Come, Fromondin, get up. You must 



346 SOCIAL FRANCE 

not sleep too long, good sire. The great tournament ought already 
to be forming/ The young man leaped from his bed on hearing 
the voice, and the squires entered to serve him. They quickly 
booted and clothed him. In the presence of all, Count William of 
Montclin girded the sword on him with a golden belt. ' Dear 
nephew,' he said, ' I enjoin thee not to trust false and dissolute 
men; given a long life thou shalt be a mighty prince. Always be 
strong, victorious, and redoubtable to all thy enemies. Give the 
vair and gray to many deserving men. It is the way to attain 
honor.' * Everything is in God's hands,' answered Fromondin. Then 
they led to him a costly horse. He mounted him with an easy 
bound, and they handed him a shield emblazoned with a lion." 

This is the ceremony of knighting and the words of the 
patron which comprise almost the whole of knightly ethics. 

Farther on another knighting is described. But this one 
is of a comic character. It is the knighting of the son of a 
villein, Rigaut, son of Hervis, and in the eyes of our feudal 
bard a villein could not be anything but ridiculous. This 
Rigaut was, however, very brave and strong, and he was 
descended from high nobility: this was why, as an exception 
to the rule, he was to be knighted. But he was an ill-bred 
rustic and did not know the forms. 

"Begon said to him, 'You shall be a knight; only go and bathe 
a little, and then some one will give you the vair and gray,' 

* To the devil with your vair and gray, if I must take a bath 
for it,' he answered ; ' I have not fallen into a moor or a 
marsh; I have nothing to do with vair and gray. At the 
home of my father, Hervis, there is enough fustian for my use.' 

* I have charged myself with clothing you,' said Begon. They gave 
Rigaut the rich mantle and piece of ermine which covered him and 
trailed on the earth more than a foot. Rigaut found this very 
inconvenient. A squire carrying a knife to serve the knights passed 
by. Rigaut asked for the knife, and cut off a foot and a half of 
the pelisse. ' What are you doing, my good son,' said his father. 

* It is the custom for new knights to wear the trailing robe of vair 
and gray.' * It is a foolish custom,' said Rigaut ; ' how could I run 
and jump with this pelisse trailing? ' ' By my head,' said the king, 

* he is not far wrong.' Then Begon asked for the sword, Froberge, 
seized the gold hilt, and himself attached it to Rigaut's belt, who 
allowed him to do it. Then he raised the palm of his hand and 
let it descend so sharply on his cousin's neck that he well-nigh 
stretched him upon the ground. Angrily Rigaut drew his new 
sword a foot and a half as if to strike the good knight Begon. 
Hervis, his father, stopped him: 'What are you doing, madman? 



FEUDAL FINANCE AND CHIVALRY 347 

It is the eustpm; it is thus that one makes knights.' 'It is a bad 
custom/ said Rigaut; 'bad luck to him who first established it.' 
The bystanders began to laugh, but his father went on : ' Listen to 
me; if you are not a brave and hardy knight I pray God Who died 
on the cross, not to let you live a day longer.' ' If he is not a brave 
man,' said Begon, * I hope to lose the chateau of Belin.' " 

Here ends the description of a grotesque knighting, but 
instructive, because it contains all the details of the ceremony 
in use, including the dubbing with a stroke of the fist. 

The last case of this kind v^^hich our poem presents is the 
knighting of Gerbert, son of Garin. It is the most complete, 
if not the most poetic, of all. The investor of Gerbert must 
have been Pepin the emperor himself. 

" The king said to the Burgundian, Aubri : * You will give the 
young man his bath ; then we will give him the vair and gray.' They 
heated the bath. Gerbert, having returned to his lodgings, got into 
his bath and remained a little while. The other vessels accommo- 
dated eighty pages. The emperor for love of Garin made them all, 
knights. They all shared in the vair and gray, a present of the 
radiant queen. As for Gerbert he received a precious velvet robe, 
enriched with flowers of gold and richly bordered and seamed with 
ermine. The embroidery alone had cost four gold marks. The 
emperor took a hauberk from the treasure of Saint-Denis which 
he himself had formerly taken from a king he had killed. The 
links were small, strong, light, and white as the hawthorn-flower. 
A burnished helmet was placed on the young man's head, and it 
was the king himself who belted the sword which contained a tooth 
of Saint Firmin in its hilt to his side. When he raised the palm 
of his hand to strike the nape of the neck the king said : ' Knight, 
be brave and hardy ; shun all bad deeds ! ' * I pledge myself,' an- 
swered Gerbert. A valuable horse had been led in; the bridle and 
the saddle, enriched with gold, were valued at a thousand Paris 
livres. Gerbert mounted him easily. They gave him a curved shield, 
blazoned with a golden lioneel. He seized the lance with its gilt 
banner, spurred his horse with both heels, stopped short, and re- 
turned to the emperor. How he was then admired and applauded 
by matrons and maidens, burghers and servants ! ' He knows how 
to ride a horse,' said one, ' how to lead an army, and defy his 
enemies.' After that they knighted twenty other knights. Gerbert 
gave them burnished helmets, white hauberks, and mighty steeds. 
You may imagine that there was plenty of gold for the jongleurs 
and minstrels assembled to make the feast more beautiful. 

" Thus clothed and mounted, Gerbert and his knights returned to 
the palace. The king took him in his arms and kissed his cheeks 



348 SOCIAL FRANCE 

and lips. Water was sent for. All sat down at the table, and 
when they had eaten and drunk at leisure, they went with the 
queen to hear vespers in the royal chapel. Then they returned to 
Notre-Dame, where the new knights were to keep vigil. Gerbert 
remained there all night, and when day came he heard mass and 
presented a rich offering. And then the new knight hastened to 
his inn." 

The fete ended with a sumptuous banquet at the palace. 

" The king took Gerbert by the hand and seated him at the table 
near himself. As one might suppose, there was not lacking goose, 
gosling, and roast peacock. On rising from the table the horses 
were ordered and they left Paris for the tilt. The queen, of 
beautiful and noble figure, proposed to follow them accompanied 
by ten maidens. Gerbert on a large, fiery courser, lance in hand, 
his arm covered by a rich shield, was regarded by all. It was said 
that his horse, his arms, and he were all a single being. The tilt 
was accomplished without diftculty or quarrel." 

Thus historians and bards agree in picturing the chivalry 
of the end of the twelfth century. It was an imposing, sump- 
tuous display, in which the foolish extravagance of the noblps 
knew no bounds. It was the triumph of " largess." The 
knightly investiture, given by a father or a suzerain, had a 
wholly military and secular character; the sign of investi- 
ture was made as simple as possible, and the moral con- 
tained in the sermon of investiture quite rudimentary, in- 
deed: the young man is simply required to be brave, terrible 
to his enemies, and generous to his friends. The religious 
element was limited to the vigil of arms in the church and 
the mass heard in the morning, but there is no investiture by 
the priest, or the bishop, nor even the benediction of the 
sword placed on the altar; this came later, during and pri- 
marily at the end of the thirteenth century. 

Could one, then, say that the religious or sacerdotal in- 
vestiture did not exist at the time of Philip Augustus as 
well as the pure lay investiture, and in certain cases even 
predominate? Such a statement would be imprudent; for 
here is a famous example of ecclesiastical knighting recorded 
by a historian. 

In 1213, the conqueror of Languedoc — the devout Catholic, 
Simon de Montfort — wished to knight his son Amauri. He 



FEUDAL FINANCE AND CHIVALRY 349 

was at Castelaaudaiy, at the time of the feast of Saint John, 
with the two bishops of Orleans and Auxerre. He asked 
the bishop of Orleans to consent to confer knighthood upon 
his son by putting the baldric on him. The bishop for a 
long time refused, says the chronicler Peter of Vaux-de- 
Cemay: he knew that it was contrary to custom, and that 
ordinarily only a knight could create a knight. However, at 
the insistence of the count and his friends, he finally decided 
to do it. It was in summertime. Simon de Montfort pitched 
large tents in the plain outside the city, which was much too 
small to contain the multitude of onlookers. On the day 
fixed the bishop of Orleans celebrated mass in a tent. The 
young Amauri, his father on one hand and his mother on 
the other, approached the altar. His parents offered him to 
the Lord and asked the bishop to consecrate him knight in the 
service of Christ. Immediately the two prelates knelt before 
the altar, belted the sword on him, and sang the Veni 
Creator with profound devotion. And the chronicler adds 
these significant words: '* "What a new and unusual way of 
conferring knighthood. Who could restrain his tears? " 
This mode of knighting was, perhaps, not so extraordinary 
as Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay thought, for in a ritual of the 
Roman church, drawn up at the beginning of the eleventh 
century, there already is the formula of prayer to be used 
by bishops in conferring knighthood. However, the very 
words of the chronicler prove that in France knighting by 
bishops was not common. Simon de Montfort introduced it: 
he inaugurated the ecclesiastical tradition; he invited the 
church to take chivalry and make a kind of sacrament of it, 
and it is very possible that such an example set by the hero of 
the crusade against the Albigenses induced a large number 
of devout Catholic families to proceed in the same manner. 



CHAPTER XI 
THE NOBLE DAME 

When the French noble was in possession of knighthood — 
that is to say, when he was a full warrior and qualified to 
govern his fief — he married. The woman whom he married 
brought him lands, castles, and at the very least revenues. 
It was the only way for him to meet the demands on his 
budget and to rank among the proprietors and sovereigns, 
unless he was associated with his father while awaiting his 
inheritance. This brings us to the interesting question of 
marriages and the more general question of the noblewoman 
and of the lady of the manor in the middle ages. 

At the end of the twelfth century the feudal regime fully 
and definitely recognized the woman's right to succeed to the 
fief and to possess the seigniory. She inherited the land and 
the power, thus emerging from the semi-domestic state to 
which French society had so long confined her. Christianity 
struggled laboriously against the customs of the time, in 
order to secure her emancipation, and feudalism decidedly 
advanced her. On the other hand, as head of a religious 
house, as abbess, or dignitary of an abbey, the noblewoman 
was considered ever more capable of curing souls. There 
was, then, an evident progress in feminine destiny — progress 
closely interwoven with that of general civilization. It will 
be seen, when we speak of the literary nobility and of the 
development of courtesy in the time of Philip Augustus, 
that that culture tended to raise woman to a superior con- 
dition in certain parts of seigniorial France. But it must 
be admitted that the life led by the nobles did not usually 
have the important consequences that certain historians have 
been pleased to point out. When, for example, one reads 
in a lecture of Guizot on the History of French Civilization 
that the life of the chateau created the family spirit, en- 
couraged domestic virtues, brought out the noble sentiments 

350 



THE NOBLE DAME 351 

of gallantry, and refined the mind, he must not accept the 
statement without reserve. What, after all, was the chateau? 
A military post, a barracks; and it has never appeared that 
barracks were a very suitable place for the creation and 
development of delicate morals, and of sentiments of cour- 
tesy founded on the respect for woman. 

In the majority of ca^es the lady of the manor, in the time 
of Philip Augustus, was still what she had been in the cen- 
turies preceding feudalism : a virago of violent temperament, 
of strong passions, trained from infancy in all physical ex- 
ercises, sharing the dangers and pleasures of the knights of 
her circle. The feudal life, full of surprises and dangers, 
demanded of her a healthy mind and body, a masculine car- 
riage, and habits all but masculine. She accompanied her 
father in the chase ; in time of war, if she were a widow or if 
her husband were on the crusade, she conducted the defense 
of the seigniory; and, in time of peace, she did not recoil 
before the longest and most dangerous pilgrimages. She 
even went on the crusade on her own account. It was in 
this way that Margaret of France, the sister of Philip Augus- 
tus, — twice a widow, first of the young King Henry of Eng- 
land, the eldest of the sons of Henry II; then of King Bela 
III of Hungary, — sought to aid the crusaders who were fight- 
ing in the Holy Land in 1197. She sold her dowry, and took 
the money thus realized to the Orient. She disembarked at 
Tyre, where her brother-in-law. Count Henry of Champagne, 
met her ; and she died eight days after her arrival. In 1218, 
in France, one sees ^n interesting spectacle in the county of 
Champagne: a war between the countess of Champagne, 
Blanche of Navarre, guardian of her minor son, Thibaud IV, 
and their rival Erard of Brienne, was fought to the death. 
And Blanche conducted this war in person, as leader of her 
troops. She invaded Lorraine, burned Nancy in passing, and 
joined the camp of the Emperor Frederick II. Later, in the 
neighborhood of Joinville or of the Chateau- Villain, she led 
her knights in person, waging a real pitched battle against 
her principal enemies ; and she won the victory. 

How were these young noblewomen, destined to become so 
energetic, brought up? Strictly historical documents do not 
inform us. The chronicles only mention the women of the 



352 SOCIAL FRANCE 

military aristocracy in connection with marriages, divorces, 
or genealogy; in informing us of their children and their 
lineage. Women did not have a place in general or local 
history, except when they held or transmitted fiefs, thus 
actively aiding in the circulation of lands and seigniories by 
entering or dissolving marriages. On the other hand, they 
were rarely mentioned in letters: at most, one finds in the 
works of certain ecclesiastical authors letters like those which 
the theologian Adam of Perseigne wrote to a noblewoman, 
Mathilda of Blois, countess of Perche. She had asked him 
for a rule of conduct by which to live as a Christian in the 
world. Th€ abbot of Perseigne gave her excellent precepts 
of religion and morals. He counseled her, above all, to 
abstain from games of chance, from wasting her time at chess, 
and from taking pleasure at the indecent farces of the play- 
ers. He also advised her to be moderate in matters of dress, 
and he ridiculed the gown with the long train, comparing 
the women who wore them to foxes, with whom the tail was 
the most beautiful ornament. One conclusion appears from 
the letter — ^that the ladies of the manor were gamesters. We 
know this from the chansons de geste, which often present 
them as engaged in interminable games of dice and chess. 

If we may believe the preachers and monks who wrote the 
more or less satirical treatises on morals, women must also 
have had other faults. The least of these were being co- 
quettes, spendthrifts, ruining their husbands, wearing false 
hair, rouging, and proudly displaying their gowns with 
trains. The authors of the sermons incessantly stormed 
against the extreme length of the gowns; a diabolical in- 
vention, they said. But all this is commonplace and not at 
all characteristic : there is nothing in it that is entirely pecu- 
liar to the middle ages. As to the more serious reproaches, 
there is a question of how far one can rely on the allegations 
of the preachers. By profession they saw the dark side of 
everything, unduly exaggerated human infirmities, and struck 
hard rather than justly. Can one rely any more on the 
satires of the monks? The monks were often pessimists, 
disposed to slander everything of their age, and accustomed 
especially to consider woman as a perverse and infernal be- 
ing, who had ruined and always would ruin the human race. 



THE NOBLE DAME 353 

In every case we find only vague generalities in ecclesiastical 
literature. In it woman, as a whole, without distinction as 
to social condition is attacked, and it would be very difficult 
to obtain precise information from it relating to the life of 
women who were born and bred in the chateau. 

In the poems of a martial nature, where the soldier occu- 
pies the whole stage and plays the principal role, the femi- 
nine side is sacrificed. The young girl does not appear, 
except to perform the duties of hospitality, and hospitality 
understood in the broadest sense, toward the knight who is 
the guest of her father. It was she who was charged with 
greeting him, with disarming him, with making ready his 
chamber and his bed, with preparing his bath, and even (we 
have on this point many unquestionable texts, especially in 
Girart de Boussillon) with massaging him in order to help 
him go to sleep. We must accept the middle ages as they 
were, with all the simplicity of their customs. That society 
was much freer than ours in words and in action: honi soit 
qui mal y pense. 

One gathers from the chansons de geste that it was the 
young women who made all the advances in love to knights 
entertained at the paternal mansion. The latter resembled 
Hippolytus of Greek legend: they dreamed only of war and 
the chase. Maidens thought them handsome, and they told 
them so without the least embarrassment: it was they who 
made the declaration of love. And, more remarkable still, 
their advances were sometimes very coldly received. To be 
sure, the authors of these martial poems, the minstrels who 
sang to amuse the barons after drinking, had a clumsy hand 
for treating such delicate matters. Their observations on 
the position and customs of the woman of high rank could 
not be very profound or drawn from the better sources. 
Have not writers at all times been inclined to give as the 
expression of general truth the various scandalous deeds or 
the pathological eases which they from preference study? 
What idea of the French bourgeoisie would a foreigner ob- 
tain to-day if he knew it only from the books of our modem 
novelists ? 

One cannot, then, judge the woman of the epoch in gen- 
eral from the chansons de geste. What can be most clearly 



354 SOCIAL FRANCE 

inferred from these recitals is that their authors had a very 
limited and very inadequate respect for woman, and this was 
simply because she was still considered by feudal society as an 
inferior being, whom one could slander and treat rudely. To 
tell the truth, married women in the chansons appear in a 
more favorable light than young women, which is singular. 
In the poem Garin le Lorrain, in Girart de Boussillon, the 
noble lady, the lawful wife of the baron, was usually a vir- 
tuous person, who loved her husband and was devoted and 
faithful to him. We are, for example, told of Beatrice, wife 
of Duke Begon, who, carried away by a traitor, desperately 
resisted and said to the ravisher, " I will allow myself to be 
broiled and roasted before I will permit you to approach me. ' ' 
The wife of Girart of Roussillon, the Countess Bertha, is a 
model of conjugal devotion. But, on the other hand, the 
minstrels have no scruples in presenting women of the high- 
est nobility, even queens, as exposed to the insults and bru- 
tality of knights. 

In the lay Garin the wife of King Pepin, Blanchefleur, 
was one day obliged to snatch from the hands of a Bordeaux 
chief, Bernard of Naisil, an unfortunate messenger sent to 
the king by the opposite side, whom Bernard was about to 
murder in the open court before the eyes of his sovereign. 
" Tour place should be in the forests," she cried indig- 
nantly, " robbing pilgrims and infesting the highways." — 
* ' Silence, foolish and immodest woman, ' ' responded the furi- 
ous Bernard. " The king must have been out of his senses 
when he burdened himself with you. A violent death to 
him who brought about your marriage! Only reproach and 
dishonor can come of it. ' ' — ' ' You lie ! " responded the queen ; 
' ' thief, murderer, traitor, perjurer ! The king of France 
should not have permitted you to appear in his court." 
Then, after that avalanche of insults, she fled in tears to her 
chamber. Instead of interposing and defending his wife, the 
king remained silent. The poet evidently intended to make 
him play an unimportant, even a ridiculous, role. It was 
the hero of the lay, the Duke Garin, who avenged the honor 
of the queen. He arrived at the palace just at the moment 
when the queen came out of her room. Lorrain looked at her 
and saw her beautiful eyes bathed with tears. " Beautiful 



THE NOBLE DAME 355 

queen," he said, '' who could give you any cause for annoy- 
ance? By the living God, there is no one under heaven — I 
except my lord, the king — who, if he dared as much as to 
contradict you, would not become my mortal enemy. Who 
has insulted you? " — " Sire," said Blanchefleur, " that 
traitor, that brigand, Bernard of Naisil, has disgraced me 
before the king." Garin immediately went to Bernard, vio- 
lently pushing aside the ranks before him, seized him by the 
hair, threw him to the ground under his feet, broke four 
of his teeth, and, after ripping up his chest with his spurs, 
left him. 

If the minstrels, the authors or composers of poems, can 
always be believed, the husbands themselves did not refrain 
from ill-treating their wives. A word or a request which 
displeased them was enough. In Garin, the Queen Blanche- 
fleur asked the king to declare himself in favor of the party 
of Lorrain, " The king heard it and anger showed in his 
face: he raised his fist and struck her on the nose, so hard 
that he drew four drops of blood." And the lady said, 
" Many thanks; when it pleases you, you may do it again." 
One could cite other scenes of the same sort in which there 
is always a blow on the nose with the fist: it almost became 
a habit. Feudal poets also energetically reproved the knight 
who took counsel with his wife, and they were pleased to- 
attribute speeches such as these to their heroes: '' Woman, 
go within and eat and drink with your attendants in your 
gilded and painted rooms; busy yourself with dyeing silks: 
that is your business. Mine is to strike with the sword of 
steel." 

It must be remembered that this way of treating women as 
though they were beings of a secondary order, of abusing 
them, and of roughly sending them to the women's quarters, 
was the result of a fancy which at the least singularly ex- 
aggerated actual fact. Without speaking of the romances of 
the courteous type which belonged to the cycle of the Round 
Table, and of which we will speak later, there were other 
lays almost contemporaneous with Philip Augustus, as that 
of Guillaume de Dole, in which the woman, even the young 
girl, played a role which was all to her credit. In this last 
poem the action consists almost entirely in bringing to view 



356 SOCIAL FEANCE 

the courage and ability of the young lady, Lienor, the sister 
of William of Dole, who victoriously struggled against a 
calumny of which she was the victim, and found a reward 
for her virtue in a marriage with the emperor. It is true 
that the lay Guillaume de Dole, though it is foreign to the 
British cycle and celebrates chivalrous bravery and the tour- 
nament, is not precisely inspired by the feudal and martial 
spirit which animates the epics. It represents an intermedi- 
ate type between the purely military type and the romances 
of adventure — a romance of love according to the customs in 
certain seigniorial courts, which were more polished and more 
courteous than others. 

One can conclude that, even in the time of Philip Augus- 
tus, the courteous spirit favorable to women was very rare 
in feudal society ; and that, in a great majority of the feudal 
seigniories and manors, there persisted the old tendency, 
the disrespectful and brutal attitude toward women, de- 
scribed and, if you please, exaggerated in the greater part 
of the chansons de geste. The amorous fancies of the trouba- 
dours of the south and of some trouveres of Flanders and 
Champagne should not delude us. The sentiments which 
they expressed were simply, we must believe, those of a 
select few, of a very small minority of knights and barons, 
who were in advance of their century. The greater part of 
feudal society understood the statements concerning women 
otherwise: woman was considered to be of an inferior sub- 
stance, and treated accordingly by fathers and husbands. 
History proves this. It shows us the sovereign and smaller 
lords acting with the same violence, the same absolute lack 
of deference and courtesy. Henry of Anjou, king of Eng- 
land and ruler of the Plantagenet empire, was troubled by 
his wife, the famous Eleanor of Aquitaine, in his pleasures 
as also in his policies regarding his sons: he kept her im- 
prisoned for many years. We know, on the other hand, with 
what brutality Philip Augustus conducted himself toward 
\ the unfortunate Ingeborg of Denmark, whom he abandoned 
the day after the marriage. We know how he kept her pris- 
oner, first in a certain convent; then shut up in the tower 
of Etampes, where she remained for a very long time. If 
the complaints of the victim herself can be believed, her 



. THE NOBLE DAME 357 

husband, not content with submitting her to a regime of 
rigorous seclusion, would not even give her enough to eat 
or to wear. Must it be assumed, in order to explain this con- 
temptible harshness, that Philip Augustus and Henry II 
were men of a particularly inhuman temperament and rulers 
without mercy? Ordinary barons acted in the same way. 
In 1191, we see a seignior of the county of Burgundy, 
Gautier of Salins, maltreating his wife, Mathilda of Bour- 
bon, and throwing her into prison. She, fortunately for 
her, succeeded in escaping and sought refuge with her 
parents. Such instances were, without doubt, not excep- 
tional: they simply prove that, in spite of all the theoretical 
gallantries of the poets, the middle ages, even at the end of 
the twelfth century, were still in practice very hard for the 
woman, noble though she was, and that the precepts of chiv- 
alry, which enjoined deference to the weaker sex, were far 
from being realized. 



This will appear still more clearly if we consider feudal 
marriages. On this subject poetical and historical sources 
are in remarkable accord. Long ago it was said: In the 
manners and customs of that epoch marriage was, before all 
else, a union of two seigniories. The seignior married in 
order to extend his fief, as well as to raise sons capable of 
defending it; in his eyes a wife represented, above all, an 
estate and a castle. 

The first consequence of this peculiar conception was that 
the husband was chosen by the father or suzerain, and the 
feeling of the young girl to be married was not consulted in 
any way. The feudal heiress passively received the knight 
or baron who was destined for her. She was, in a sense, 
absorbed in the estate or the castle: she formed a part of 
the real estate ; she passed with the land to the one who was 
to possess it, and her consent mattered little. As a young 
girl, orphan, or widow she could not resist her father, who 
held the seigniory, or the suzerain, who in certain cases had 
acquired the disposal of it. On this point, as always, feudal 
usage appears in the chansons de geste in striking relief. The 
kings are to be seen distributing fiefs, and the women who 



358 SOCIAL FRANCE 

represent them, to their faithful vassals as if it were purely a 
question of material interests. It will do here to recall a few 
very curious pages from the poem, Lorrains. 

King Thierri of Maurienne said to Duke Garin: 

" * Free and noble page, I cannot love you too much, for you have 
defended this fief for me. Before dying I wish to repay you: here 
is my little girl, Blanchefleur, fair of face; I give her to you.' 
The maiden was only eight and a half years old; she was already 
the most beautiful person to be found in a hundred countries. 

* Take her. Seignior Garia, and with her you shall have my fief.' — ■ 
' Sire,' responded Garin, * I take her on the condition that the 
Emperor Pepin will not oppose it.' " 

Garin then went to find the Emperor Pepin: 

" * Before leaving the world,' he said to him, ' King Thierri sent for 
me and gave me his daughter, and with her the fief of Maurienne; 
I have received the gift, Sire Emperor, on the condition that it 
would be agreeable to you.' ' I willingly grant it,' responded Pepin." 

But then Fromont, another vassal, rose up and cried out, 
with anger in his eyes: 

" ' I, I oppose the gift. Sire, you hunted one day near Senlis, 
in the forest of Montmelian. It then pleased you to give to the 
brother of Garin the duchy of Gascony. At the same time you 
promised to give me the first vacant estate which I should demand. 
There were more than a hundred witnesses to it. Maurienne is to 
my liking and I lay claim to it.' — ' You are mistaken,' said the king. 

* What a father at the hour of his death gives his child with the 
consent of his vassals no one has the right to take away. When 
another fief reverts to me, however large it be, I shall invest you 
with it.' — * No,' said Fromont, ' the fief of Maurienne has reverted 
to you ; I demand it and I will have it.' " 

There was a dispute between the two barons: they began 
by heaping each other with abuses, then they came to blows, 
and Garin dealt Fromont a heavy blow with his fist, " which 
stunned him and stretched him out on the floor." This 
rivalry and the blow with the fist were the cause of a savage 
war which fills the whole poem, the war between the Lor- 
rains and the Bordelais. 

In the preceding passage the question at issue was the fief 



THE NOBLE DAME 359 

of Maurietine, and not at all the young girl whose destiny- 
was attached to it. She had no importance; she fell to the 
grantee of the fief — that was all. But to return to Fromont. 
King Pepin refused him the heiress and the fief of Maurienne. 
But he wished to marry: he sought his cousin, the Count 
Dreux, and related to him what had happened at the court 
of the king; how Grarin had " given him his fist on the 
teeth ": 

" * You are wrong/ said the Count Dreux, * to insist on having 
Blanchefleur. Were you then afraid of getting no wife? When- 
ever you wish, instead of one, you may have ten. I have just re- 
turned from seeking a noble and advantageous marriage for you: 
it is with the lady of Ponthieu, Hehssent, a sister of the Count 
Baldwin of Flanders. Her husband recently died; she has only one 
small child: once in the heritage you will no more have to fear a 
single enemy.'" 

Fromont accepted the expected heritage. Dreux proceeded 
to Baldwin and requested the hand of his sister for 
Fromont : 

" ' I gladly grant it,' responded Baldwin. ' To be sure, my sister 
is a beautiful and rich woman : from the ocean to the border of the 
Rhine, there is none who can compare with her; but Count Fromont 
is rich in possessions and friends.' — ' Now,' added Dreux, ' we must 
not lose time; long delays are rarely profitable; for if the emperor 
knew that the land of Ponthieu were vacant, he would give your 
sister to the first fellow from his kitchen, who would roast a pea- 
cock for him.' — * You speak the truth,' responded Baldwia." 

Here, with the natural exaggeration of poetry, we have 
indeed an historical fact: the omnipotence of the suzerain, 
especially of the king, who could give the heiress of a vacant 
fief to whom he chose. See how the marriage in question 
was announced to the interested person. 

Dreux and Fromont arrived at the palace of the count of 
Flanders : 

"Baldwin called his sister. On seeing her appear, all arose, and 
each admired the noble grace of her figure and the beauty of her 
face. The Fleming took her by the hand : ' My beautiful and dear 
sister, let us speak a httle apart. How are you? ' — ' Very well, God 



360 SOCIAL FRANCE 

be thanked.' — ' Well, then, to-morrow you shall have a husband/ — 
' What did you say, my brother? I have just lost my lord : it is only 
a month since he was laid in the grave. I have by him a beautiful 
little child, which by the grace of God shall some day be a rich man ; I 
should think of protecting him, of adding wealth to his inheritance. 
And what would the world say if I should so quickly take another 
baron ? ' — ' You will do it, however, my sister. He whom I give 
you is richer than was your first husband; he is young and hand- 
some : he is the son of Hardre, the Count Palatine ; he is the valiant 
Fromont. Hardre dying, the estate of Amiens and many others 
will revert to him.' When the lady heard the name Fromont, her 
feelings suddenly changed : ' Sire Brother,' she said, * I will do so 
since you desire it.' " 

We admit that there was on her part a timid attempt at 
resistance, and that probably she was not indifferent toward 
the proposed husband. But, even if she had been, she would 
have had to submit; the wish of the head of the family or 
of the suzerain could not be opposed. And just as curious 
as the brutality with which the marriage was imposed, was 
the rapidity with which it was concluded: 

" Immediately the Fleming called Fromont : * Come, come free 
and noble knight ; come also Dreux and all our other friends ' ; and 
seizing the right hand of the lady he placed it in that of Fromont 
before them all. They did not wait a day, they did not wait an 
hour : on the spot they proceeded to the church. Clerics and priests 
were notified. There they were blessed and married. The nuptials 
were celebrated in the palace with magnificence; they jested, they 
laughed, they were entertained in a hundred ways; then if any one 
had a desire to complain it was not Count Fromont." 

The poem continues with an account of a battle; and it 
would seem that the author had entirely forgotten the young 
Blanchefleur and her fiance, Duke Garin. It is true that 
she was only eight and a half years old and could wait. It 
returns to her, however, and relates how the archbishop of 
Reims advised the Emperor Pepin not to keep the promise 
which he had made to give Blanchefleur to Garin, because, 
if Garin married her, Fromont, enraged, would cease to be 
the king's man and great peril would ensue: 

" ' What would you have me do ? ' said the king. — ' Keep the 
maiden for yourself. You are both young; she has no less land 



THE NOBLE DAME 361 

than you yourself: you could not wish a more honorable union.' — 
*Ah, indeed/ responded the king, 'marvelous words! What, Sire 
Archbishop, do you wish me to perjure my honor, to deceive those 
who have served me best? ' — ' No,' said the archbishop, * I was 
not thinking of that. But everything could be arranged with honor : 
I know two monks ready to swear to-morrow that Blanchefleur is 
a relative of Garin; act on their testimony, and by noon they will 
be separated.' — ' If it is thus,' said the king, ' I shall go to see the 
maiden, and if she suits me I shall become her husband.' " 

We must assume that Blancliefleur had grown in the in- 
terval, for the king found her to his liking, The plan was 
carried out as the archbishop had arranged it : the two monks 
swore that the fiances were relatives within the prohibited 
degrees; Garin and Blanchefleur were separated. The king 
then bluntly announced to the young girl that he wished to 
marry her: 

" ' I intend to marry you myself.' — * Good Sire,' she responded, 
* I thank you : you do me great honor ; but I call God, Who never 
Kes, to witness, that I would not give Garin the Lorrain for the 
honor of being queen. Garin is the one man in the world whom I 
could love most. However, since my desires and those of my father 
cannot be followed, I am ready to obey you.' " 

Garin was then tempted to express his displeasure by in- 
juring the king, but his brother threw himself before him : 

" What ! Senseless Lorrain, what would you say ? Relinquish 
Blanchefleur; if you wish a wife you can find ten for one, all of a 
lineage equal to hers. Take her, Sire, may it be for your happi- 



It was thus that Pepin married Blanchefleur. The nuptials 
were *' grand and rich." At the formal feast Garin served 
as cupbearer: 

"He was beautiful of form and face: one could not find a better 
built man in the world, or one of more courteous appearance. And 
the new queen took great pleasure in looking at him; her eyes went 
constantly from him to Pepin, and the king seemed ever smaller 
and more insignificant. Ah, why did she have to come to the court! 
Why had she not sent for Garin in Maurienne? He would have 
become her husband. . . . Alas! it was too late, and after all she 
could only accuse herself ! " 



362 SOCIAL FRANCE 

In the preceding passages we find all the elements of feudal 
marriage, and all the customs which attach to it : the identi- 
fication of the heiress, the noblewoman, with the fief; a 
betrothal while one of the parties was still in infancy; the 
absolute right of the father over his daughter, and of the 
suzerain, especially of the king, over his vassal ; the unsenti- 
mental character of the marriage, which is considered solely 
as the union of two rich and powerful feudal landholders; 
the practically complete effacement and passive submission on 
the part of the woman, who was consulted neither as to her 
wishes nor as to her heart : these are the things which clearly 
appear in the narrative of the poet. One dare not say that 
these elements were invariable and that one may not find cer- 
tain passages in the epic in which, when marriage was the 
question, women revolted against the power which held them 
down and refused suitors who were imposed on them; but 
these are the exceptions which confirm the rule. And this 
rule, these customs and manners, actually existed in the 
society of that time ; allowing for the exaggerations of detail 
inherent in poetic works, they are true historical facts, ele- 
ments of real life. 

It is not necessary to have thoroughly studied the 
chronicles contemporaneous with Philip Augustus to ascer- 
tain that betrothals between infants who were still in the 
nursery, and that marriages actually contracted between girls 
of twelve and boys of fourteen (for example, the marriage 
of Baldwin VI of Hainault and of Marie of Champagne in 
1185), were very common facts in the history of the 
seigniory. It is also proved by innumerable examples that 
the seigniorial marriages were usually the result of agree- 
ments made long before between the possessors of the fief, 
when the children were still under age, and that these matri- 
monial agreements were made and unmade to fit the changes 
and necessities in the general policy of the heads of the 
seigniories. For girls and boys were then only the figures 
on a chessboard, so that individual tastes or the particular 
wishes of the children of the noble family were unknown or 
were constantly sacrificed to the political and material inter- 
ests of the house. History, as well as poetry, shows us that 
fathers and suzerains were autocrats, who imposed decisions. 



THE NOBLE DAME 363 

It is sufficient in this regard to allude to the numerous cases 
in which Philip Augustus made use of his absolute right in 
marrying his vassals, or in preventing them from marrying 
against his will. In history, as in the epics, the girls were 
all married young, willingly or unwillingly, and widows were 
not left time to weep for their husbands, inasmuch as it was 
imperative that the fief should be managed by a man; so 
that in those feudal amours sentiment had no part. "Why 
be astonished, then, at the extreme easiness of divorces and 
at the strange vicissitudes in the careers of many of the 
noble dames? 

From the natural trend of things they themselves acquired 
the habit of changing masters. To have three or four hus- 
bands was a minimum. The slightest motive, the least 
physical defect, a simple illness, might cause a man to repu- 
diate a woman ; but the documents justify the assertion that 
many of the separations were divorces by mutual consent. 
The church vainly attempted to impose its veto ; it was over- 
ruled, obliged to close its eyes. And yet the principle of 
the indissolubility of marriage is said to have had the force 
of law in that catholic society! Plain deception! Another 
very rigorous ecclesiastical rule, that which forbade the mar- 
riage of blood relations even in the most distant degree of 
blood relationship, gave all the facilities that these change- 
able temperaments required. And, thanks to the complicity 
of the clerics, marriages were broken as easily as they were 
entered. 

The great circulation of the women and fiefs through noble 
society and, because France was then fecund, the many chil- 
dren of these marriages had as their result the inextricable 
entangling of rights or claims to seigniorial domains. Each 
husband bore the feudal titles of his wife, and kept them 
after a divorce. On the other hand, the joint heirs of the 
paternal power were named like their father. The complica- 
tion turned to chaos, even for contemporaries. 

One of the heroes of the fourth crusade, "William of 
Champlitte, had in 1196 married Alix, lady of Marche. She 
died, and before the year passed William was married to 
Elizabeth of Mont-Saint-Jean, widow of Aimon of Marigny, 
by whom she had four sons. In 1200, William and Elizabeth 



364 , SOCIAL FRANCE 

were divorced, and each married for the third time — William, 
an Eustachia of Courtenay, another widow, and Elizabeth, 
Bertrand of Saudon. The latter was also a widower and 
brought to his wife six sons, not counting the daughters, 
negligible quantities. William of Champlitte died in 1210, and 
his widow Eustachia, in her third marriage, became the wife of 
William, Count of Sancerre. She lost her third husband. Did 
she marry a fourth? The documents do not say; but such 
a case was common enough. From what took place in a. 
single family during a period of fifteen years, one can imag- 
ine the infinite confusion which entire France presented. 



The condition of woman and of marriage may best be 
seen from the details of certain episodes in which the fiction 
of reality sometimes surpasses the imagination of romance. 

The count of Boulogne, Matthew of Alsace, married three 
times; and died in 1172, leaving only two daughters, Ida 
and Mathilda. Ida, the elder, was only twelve years old, and 
until her marriage her uncle, Philip of Alsace, count of 
Flanders, was legally vested with the administration of her 
fief. A noble heiress was not only under the power of her 
guardian; she was dependent on the high sovereign of the 
seigniory, whose consent was necessary to her marriage. But 
the county of Boulogne depended on three suzerainties — 
Flanders, England, and France. Louis VII and Henry 
Plantagenet demanded that Philip of Alsace consult them 
regarding the choice of a husband. It was a difficult situa- 
tion. To please one of the kings was the surest way of dis- 
pleasing the other. The guardian escaped the dilemma by 
keeping the fief and the heiress. At twenty, Ida was not 
^ yet married, which was an unusual situation. But this sys- 
tem of delay could not last very long : the vassals and subjects 
of the county of Boulogne would not consent to remain 
without a chief. Philip of Alsace gave his niece to Gerard 
III, count of Gueldre, a well-chosen personage, because he 
was neither the vassal of France nor of England; he did 
not owe homage to either of the two kings (1181). But 
he did not possess the heiress or her dowry long, as he died 
within a year. His widow immediately left Gueldre and 



THE NOBLE DAME 365 

returned to Boulogne, being obliged to employ main force 
in carrying away the jewels and other objects of value which 
Gerard had given her. 

Everything had to begin over, Ida, with her inheritance, 
was much wooed. In 1183, when she was twenty-two, Philip 
of Alsace married her to a German, Berthold VI, duke of 
Zahringen, who was sixty. She followed him to his estates 
in Suabia, leaving Boulogne under the administration of the 
count of Flanders. For three years her subjects did not 
hear of her. In 1186, she returned to them, a widow for a 
second time; but, contrary to the rule, she retained her free- 
dom for four years. The historian, Lambert of Ardres, main- 
tains that she used it indiscreetly.^ The cure perhaps had 
an evil tongue, but, as he is the only one who tells us of the 
matrimonial adventures of the countess of Boulogne, we are 
forced to follow his account, which is not lacking in interest. 

The county of Boulogne bordered on the county of Guines ; 
and the son of the count of Guines, Arnoul, — a noble of good 
appearance, a great frequenter of the tournaments, a friend 
of minstrels and scholars, whom he showered with gold, — 
made an impression on the young widow. He was, too, the 
preferred candidate of Philip of Alsace, who held the county 
of Guines in strict dependence on the Flemish seigniory. 
For the same reason he was unsuitable to the king of France, 
who was an enemy of the count of Flanders: Philip Augus- 
tus brought forward Renaud of Dammartin, a brilliant 
knight, as rival. It is true that Renaud was married, but in 
that epoch that sort of obstacle did not hinder any one. He 
hastened to renounce his wife, Marie of Chatillon; and, be- 
coming free, he entered the lists a little late, without doubt, 
for Ida had already conferred with Arnoul, who pleased her, 
and was almost engaged. Nevertheless, she yielded to the 
entreaties of her eousin-german, Isabella of Hainault, queen 
of France, and consented to enter into a conference with 
Renaud of Dammartin. She presently agreed that she would 
marry him, if he obtained the consent of her guardian. 

But Philip of Alsace absolutely refused to give his niece 
to one connected with the king of France. In consequence 
of this opposition, Ida returned to the side of Arnoul of 

' " Giving herself over to all the delights of the secular world." 



366 SOCIAL FRANCE 

Guines. She had many secret interviews with him, and even 
went with him to Ardres to attend the funeral services of a 
messenger whom she had sent to him. Arnoul wished, by 
all means, to keep her and to marry her at once. She con- 
vinced him that this was impossible, and formally promised 
to return to him. But Renaud, who had renounced his wife 
for a better, would not resign himself to losing everything. 
He kept a close watch on the countess of Boulogne and his 
rival, and saw that he must take fortune by the forelock. 
With a few confederates he carried Ida away from the castle 
where she was staying; carried her in one dash to Lorraine 
and shut her up in the castle of Rista. How vigorously did 
the victim of the abduction resist? The cure of Ardres does 
not satisfy our curiosity. In any case, Ida sent Arnoul a 
secret message from her place of captivity, complaining of 
the violence which she had suffered and promising to be hi8 
wife, if he would come and free her. Arnoul did not hesi- 
tate. He set out with two knights. His preparations, how- 
ever, had taken some time. In the interval Renaud succeeded 
in winning back the heart of the prisoner and obtaining her 
pardon, so that she revealed the whole plot to him. When 
Arnoul and his friends arrived at Verdun, the bishop of the 
town, whom Renaud and Philip Augustus had attached to 
their cause, had them seized, chained, and thrown into prison. 
Renaud married the heiress without further trouble, and 
returned to France with her to take possession of the county 
of Boulogne. The protection of Philip Augustus was never 
gratuitous. In 1192, the new husband had to sign an agree- 
ment by which he declared himself the liegeman of the king 
for the people of Boulogne, agreed to surrender Lens and its 
surroundings, and to pay a relief of seven thousand livres. 

Thus the noblewoman was a prize over whom suitors dis- 
puted; whom they carried away from father, guardian, even 
from husband ! A contemporary of Ida of Boulogne, Stephen, 
count of Sancerre, carried away an heiress, whom the lord of 
Trainel had married only a few days before, and made her 
his first wife. This was the application to marriage of the 
law that might makes right, which, with all respect to jurists, 
was the fundamental principle of feudalism. 

Need one say that in southern France the matrimonial 



THE NOBLE DAME 367 

bond was no stronger and no more respected ? The marriage 
of Montpellier is a parallel to the marriage of Boulogne. 

The king of Aragon, Alfonso II, sought the hand of 
Eudoxia, daughter of the Greek emperor, Manuel Comnenus. 
His suit was granted, and the princess set out for Spain. 
But the Aragonese found that his fiancee was very tardy and 
he had little faith in the Byzantine promises. Eudoxia and 
the Greeks of her suite arrived at Montpellier, and there, to 
their surprise, learned that the king of Aragon, losing pa- 
tience, had married Sancia, a daughter of the king of Castile ! 
During this time the Emperor Manuel died. What was go- 
ing to become of his daughter, stranded at the other end of 
the Mediterranean? William VIII, lord of Montpellier, pro- 
posed marriage to her: an alliance with the imperial family, 
eventual rights to the throne of Constantinople, was a beauti- 
ful dream for a petty baron ! Eudoxia, little flattered, hesi- 
tated at first ; then, at the entreaties of the kings of Aragon 
and Castile, she yielded. The marriage was solemnized in 
1181, on the express condition that the first child, whether 
boy or girl, should inherit the seigniory of Montpellier. 

Five years later William VIII and Eudoxia had had enough 
of each other. It appeared that the Grecian princess was 
disagreeable, haughty, capricious, and extravagant; she had 
only one daughter; and her brother, Alexis II, was de- 
throned, which defeated the ambitions of the seignior of 
Montpellier. The latter then thought of repudiating his wife, 
and all the more, as on a visit to Alfonso II, at Barcelona, 
he had fallen in love with a relative of the queen of Aragon, 
Agnes of Castile. In 1187, William VIII left Eudoxia and 
married Agnes, " in order to have sons," he declared in the 
preamble to his marriage contract. 

The church held the proceeding improper and the reason 
insuflQcient. The bishop of Maguelonne, John of Montlaur, 
addressed a complaint to the pope, who ordered the seignior 
of Montpellier to take back Eudoxia, under pain of excom- 
munication. William, however, brought Agnes to Mont- 
pellier, and Eudoxia resignedly shut herself up in the mon- 
astery of Aniane. In spite of the pontifical prohibition, seven 
years passed and Agnes continued to reign, while William, 
having become the father of several sons, persistently sought, 



368 SOCIAL PRANCE 

with the dissolution of the first marriage, the approbation 
of the second from Rome. In 1194, Pope Celestine III finally- 
issued the canonical sentence which annulled the marriage of 
Agnes. It was labor lost! Celestine III passed away; and 
his successor. Innocent III, better disposed toward the lord 
of Montpellier, who was an enemy of the Albigenses and of 
heresy, took him under his protection. In making a show 
of orthodoxy, William VIII without doubt hoped to induce 
the pope to close his eyes to the irregularity of his marriage 
with Agnes, and to legitimatize his son. Innocent III de- 
layed until 1202 in condemning what the church could not 
tolerate. William died a short time afterwards, leaving the 
seigniory to the eldest of the six sons of Agnes, William IX, 
and making monks or canons of the others : Marie, the daugh- 
ter of Eudoxia, found herself disinherited in favor of the 
male children of the second marriage, even though she was, 
by virtue of the agreement, the legal heir to the fief. 

Sad destiny, that of Marie! Her father and stepmother, 
Agnes, in order to get rid of her, married her at twelve years 
of age (1194) to the viscount of Marseilles, Barral of Baux. 
Shortly afterward the viscount died, leaving his wife an in- 
heritance, of which William and Agnes shamelessly appropri- 
ated a large share. In 1197, they again married the widow, 
now fifteen years of age, to the count of Commignes, Bernard 
IV, a notorious debauchee, who had already gotten rid of two 
legal wives. He was not long in repudiating her, as the 
preceding wives, and marrying a fourth, despite the opposi- 
tion of Innocent III. And, sadder stiU, the deserted Marie 
found herself robbed of her inheritance by the son of the 
very Agnes who had supplanted her mother! 

Touched by this succession of misfortunes, the citizens of 
Montpellier, who were good Catholics and unwilling to remain 
under the domination of a bastard condemned by the pope, 
decided to recognize the right of the daughter of Eudoxia. 
They also hoped to obtain from a new master the full and 
complete recognition of their commune. They aimed, then, 
to give Marie a third husband, capable of defending her, 
and they proposed her to the king of Aragon, Peter II, whose 
wife had died. Marie was, it appears, decidedly unattract- 
ive ; but the king eagerly accepted the unique opportunity of 



THE NOBLE DAME 369 

adding to Catalonia a neighboring fief which brought in a 
large revenue. He married the heiress of Montpellier on the 
fifteenth of June, 1204, without first taking the precaution of 
annulling her marriage with the count of Comminges, and he 
swore " on the Holy Gospel of God that he would never 
separate from Marie, that he would never have another wife 
as long as she lived, and that he would always be faithful 
to her." The immediate consequence was the downfall of 
the son of Agnes — the bastard "William IX, whom Peter of 
Aragon succeeded, agreeable to the general wish of the in- 
habitants of Montpellier, 

When he was in possession of the seigniory his attitude 
changed. Never was an oath of matrimonial fidelity more 
outrageously violated. Soon he thought of nothing but a 
divorce, and treated the poor Marie as Philip Augustus had 
treated Ingeborg. The correspondence of Innocent III shows 
how persistently the king of Aragon sought the dissolution 
of his marriage. Persecutions and humiliations of every sort 
obliged Marie to leave Montpellier and seek refuge at Rome 
with her one protector. There she died in 1213, venerated as 
a saint. Rumor said that her husband poisoned her. It is 
certain that the news of her death left him very indifferent. 



"Whether the barons of France lived at home or in the 
distant colonies, which the crusades created in the Orient, 
their habits did not change; the feudal regime, which they 
transplanted by conquest, produced the same results every- 
where. 

In 1190, during the siege of Acre, Sibyl, the queen of 
Jerusalem, and her two daughters, died. Guy of Lusignan, 
her husband, thereby legally lost the royalty which he had held 
from her, and the eighteen-year-old sister of Sibyl, Isabella, 
became the rightful heiress. But she was married to a noble of 
ordinary lineage, Onfroi of Toron. Could this petty seignior, 
who had neither men nor money, be allowed to wear the 
crown of Jerusalem? The great vassals of the kingdom and 
the dowager queen, Marie Comnenus, simply decided that 
Isabella must be parted from her husband and marry one 



370 SOCIAL FRANCE 

of the heroes of the crusade, Conrad, marquis of Montferrat. 
This was the reverse of the usual situation: here it was not 
the wife, but the husband, who was to be sacrificed to po- 
litical interests. 

Marie Comnenus ordered Albert, archbishop of Pisa, legate 
of the Holy See in the Orient, to nullify the marriage, giving 
as the reason the fact that Isabella was only eight years old 
when she married Onfroi. Called before the tribunal of the 
legate, the latter declared that in reality Isabella had been 
betrothed to him at eight years of age, but that on her ma- 
jority she had ratified the engagement and that the marriage 
had become effective three years since. How could this reply 
be met? In canon law the argument was unassailable. One 
of the barons who was present at the investigation rose up: 
" The truth is," he cried, " that Queen Isabella never gave 
her consent to this marriage. ' ' This contradiction, according 
to feudal custom, should have resulted in a judicial duel, but 
Onfroi alienated the sympathies of everybody by refusing to 
fight with his contradictor: he must be in the wrong, since 
he did not dare to face the judgment of God. 

If, however, the church was to annul the marriage, it was 
imperative for Isabella to declare that she had never con- 
sented to it. But the young woman, who loved her husband, 
at first refused to make the declaration. During the siege 
of Acre she occupied a tent near that of Onfroi. Many 
barons, among others the count of Champagne, visited her, 
to persuade her to make the necessary sacrifice; in case of 
resistance they would have to use force. Hearing the noise 
which was going on in the tent of his wife, Onfroi said to 
his companion, a noble of Champagne, Hugh of Saint- 
Maurice, " Sire Hugh, I fear that those who are with the 
queen will compel her to say something diabolical." At that 
moment a knight entered and cried, " They are carrying 
away your wife." Onfroi instantly rushed out and ran after 
her: " Madame," he said, " you are not on the road which 
leads home; return with me." Isabella did not reply, and 
with bowed head continued on her way. This was the sepa- 
ration in fact, in anticipation of the legal separation. 

By force of entreaty Isabella came to accept the idea of 
a new union. Before the legate of the pope she deposed 



THE NOBLE DAME 371 

that she had never willingly lived with Onfroi since reaching 
her majority. Immediately the nullification of the marriage 
was pronounced. When the barons of the kingdom of Jerusa- 
lem came to swear the oath of fidelity, she said to them : ' ' You 
have separated me from my husband by force ; but I do not 
wish him to lose the property he possessed before marrying 
me. I will give him Toron, Chateaimeuf, and the other 
properties of his ancestors. ' ' Indeed, that was little enough. 

The marriage of Conrad of Montferrat and Isabella was 
performed by a relative of Philip Augustus — ^the martial 
bishop of Beauvais, Philip of Dreux. But Onfroi was not 
resigned: he complained to all-comers, demanding that they 
give him back his wife. He had many adherents in the lower 
ranks of the Christian army. "It is a crime/' they said, 
*' thus to separate a couple by force." And certain prel- 
ates of an independent mind, like the archbishop of Canter- 
bury, shared this point of view. The barons were obliged 
to justify themselves, so one of them said to Onfroi: 
" Seignior, do you wish us all to die of hunger for your 
sake? It is much better to give the queen a courageous hus- 
band, who knows how to direct the army and enables us to live 
cheaply." History does not tell us whether the *' divorcee " 
submitted to this argument. 

Two years later, April 28, 1192, Conrad of Montferrat 
fell under the blow of an assassin, and Isabella found her- 
self the widow of a second husband, during the life of the 
first. The barons of Jerusalem did not for a moment think 
of asking whether she would take back Onfroi. Their choice 
had fallen on the count of Champagne, Henry I; and, after 
eight days of widowhood (three days, according to certain 
reports), Isabella was married to the new suitor. The 
chroniclers, accordingly as they upheld the cause of Philip 
Augustus or that of Richard the Lion-Hearted, relate the 
story in different ways, but they agree on the point that 
it was necessary to impose the third marriage on Isabella 
by force. 

In September, 1197, Henry of Champagne, king of Jeru- 
salem, was in his turn the victim of a tragic destiny. One 
evening he fell, how is not known, from a window of the 
castle of Acre and was killed. It appears that Isabella had 



372 SOCIAIj FRANCE 

grown fond of him, for, when she learned of the accident, 
" she left the castle in distraction, uttering cries, lacerating 
her face and her nails, tearing her hair and her clothing, 
which fell about her in shreds to her waist. A few steps 
and she met the men who were carrying the corpse : she 
threw herself on the remains of her husband and covered 
them with kisses." 

In the name of church and of morals. Innocent III at- 
tributed the death of Henry of Champagne to the just anger 
of Grod. " In the Orient," he wrote, " a woman has been 
twice in succession delivered from an impure union; and 
those illicit marriages have obtained the assent and even pub- 
lic approbation of the clergy of Syria. But God, in order 
to frighten those who might seek to imitate such a detestable 
example, has promptly and in a glorious manner avenged 
his violated laws! " What power had the anathemas of 
bishops and of popes against the habits and covetousness of 
the mighty? Never did they exempt woman from being a 
victim of the brutal whims of a master or of the cool calcu- 
lations of political or personal interest, which prevented her 
from being independent. 

If, then, love was excluded from marriage, it was obliged 
to seek compensation elsewhere. Was it found in conjugal 
unfaithfulness? The chansons de geste generally present the 
married woman as virtuous, very attached, and devoted to 
her husband: from which it must be concluded that adultery 
was uncommon in the feudal world. But we must not make 
too much of the statements of writers. Do we believe them 
to-day when they assert that there is adultery everywhere? 
The authors of our old epics who did not give it any place 
were perhaps no nearer the truth. Let us only say that, in 
regard to the virtue of the ladies of the manors, the informa- 
tion furnished by chroniclers, moralists, and satirists does not 
absolutely agree with that of poets, entertainers, and the flat- 
terers of the barons upon whom they depended. And, as if 
to make up for the absence of love in the legal associations of 
the two sexes, the middle ages worked out a very fine solu- 
tion: outside of marriage knights and ladies contracted 
mystical unions, where the heart and spirit were, in theory, 
alone concerned. History proves, it is true, that in many 



THE NOBLE DAME 373 

cases they did not hold to the ideal and that practice vio- 
lated the theory, 

A passionate admirer of the middle ages, Leon Gautier, 
himself had to admit that feudalism had " a deplorable in- 
fluence " on marriage and domestic ties. One may judge the 
soundness of his conclusions from the preceding pages. 



CHAPTER XII 
COURTESY AND THE LETTERED NOBILITY 

If it is true that, in the time of Philip Augustus, the 
largest part of the French nobility presents itself to us in 
the same guise as in the epoch of the first crusade, an elite 
class does appear imbued with new ideals and sentiments. 
" Courtesy " appeared. Courtesy is taste for the things of 
the spirit, respect for woman and for love. 

Courtesy was born in southern France. The troubadours 
of this country taught to a nobility occupied with wars and 
piUage the refinements of chivalrous love and the worship 
of woman. The epic of northern France knew only three 
powerful motives for human actions: religious sentiment, 
with a hate of everything not Christian; feudal loyalty, or 
devotion to a suzerain or the chief of a band; and, finally, 
love for battle and booty. The lyric poetry of the first 
troubadours sang entirely of war, with those savage accents 
which one still finds in Bertran de Born. In the decline of 
the twelfth century there appeared in the poems of the south 
the chivalrous lord, whose first desire was to please the lady 
whom he chose to be the sole inspiration of his thought and 
his action. He tried to merit her love by rendering himself 
illustrious at war or in a crusade, and by showing all the 
qualities and virtues of nobility. This " courteous " love 
was incompatible with the feudal marriage, which was an 
affair of personal interests and of politics. The chosen lady 
was the suzerain of the knight who, on bended knees with 
his hands joined in hers, swore to devote himself to her, to 
protect her, and to serve her faithfully till death. As a sym- 
bol of investiture she gave him a ring and a kiss. It seems 
that this idealistic marriage was sometimes blessed by a 
priest. History shows that in the seigniorial courts of the 
south, at least in the most polished and lettered ones, the 
courteous marriage was practised in fact and public opinion 
encouraged it. 

374 



COURTESY AND THE LETTERED NOBILITY 375 

The epoeh of Louis VII and Philip Augustus was justly 
marked by a magnificent efflorescence of this lyric poetry of 
the troubadours, so interesting in the variety of its forms, 
its rather limited but very live inspiration, and its delicate 
and subtile analysis of moral sentiments. There is a great 
contrast between the brutal heroism of the son of Garin and 
the wholly psychological poetry of a Bernard of Ventadour. 
To quote from this latter: 

" To sing is worth hardly anything if the song does not come 
from the heart, and the song cannot come from the heart if there 
is no delicate profound love there. It is not in the least marvelous 
that I sing more than all other singers, for my heart turns more 
toward love; body and soul, knowledge and sense, force and power, 
I have put them all into love. In good faith and without deceit 
I love the best and most beautiful; the heart sighs, the eye weeps, 
for I love too much; and I have done myself harm by it. What 
can I do since love holds me ? Love has placed me in a prison which 
no other key than mercy can open. And I have found no mercy. 
When I see her I tremble with fear as fire in the wind; I have no 
more reason than a child, so much am I troubled by love. And 
may a woman have pity on a man who is thus conquered." 

This poetry enchanted the court of Raymond Y, count of 
Toulouse; of William VIII, lord of Montpellier, of the 
Countess Ermengarde and the Viscount Aimeri at Narbonne, 
of the counts of Rodez, the lords of Baux in Provence. Not 
all the poets were sons of serfs, like Bernard of Ventadour, 
or simple professional players, like Peyre Vidal. There were 
also noble castellans like Bertran de Born, high barons like 
Raimbaud of Orange, sons of kings like Alfonso of Aragon 
and Richard of Aquitaine. Of five hundred troubadours 
whose names we know half at least, it seems, belonged to the 
noble class. 

Courteous customs spread quickly in northern Spain and 
northern Italy — countries which practised the same ethics 
as Languedoc, Aquitaine, and Provence. Little by little they 
gained the French regions to the north of the Loire, France 
properly so-called, the residence of the Capetians, Normandy 
and the British Isles, the domain of the Plantagenets, and 
finally Champagne and Flanders. 

The epic itself gains from the sweetness of the new senti- 



376 SOCIAL FRANCE 

ments. At the beginning of a martial song, like Girart de 
Boussillon, a mystic marriage is celebrated between Girart 
and the young princess, destined for King Charles Martel. 
The poem Guillaume de Dole replaces the recitals of battles 
for the descriptions of chases, tournaments, and pleasures of 
the court, and puts in the first place the love of an emperor 
of Germany for a beautiful Frenchwoman. The romances 
of adventure of the ' ' Arthurian ' ' cycle, or the cycle of 
the Round Table, supplanted in the favor of the Plantage- 
nets, the Capetians, and the courts of Flanders and Cham- 
pagne, the war-song of the type af Garin. Christian of 
Troyes of the reign of Louis VII and Raoul of Houdenc 
under Philip Augustus employed the fashionable love epic 
where chosen knights realized the ideal of prowess and gal- 
lantry. In Tristan et Iseult, Erec, Cliges, Lancelot, I vain, 
Perceval, and MSraugis the hero sought the hand of a young 
girl with that exalted constancy which triumphs over all 
obstacles. The analysis of sentiment was sometimes as re- 
fined as in the poems of less subtile troubadours. The noble 
auditors of these romances (quite as long as the chansons de 
geste) had indeed a much keener spirit and a more delicate 
sentiment than their fathers. They understood ideal love 
and became interested in the intimate conflicts of the heart. 

Imitation of the troubadours then brought about a French 
poetic enthusiasm; the minstrels of the north adopted most 
of the forms of southern poetry: the chansons, properly so- 
called, the tengon^s or argumentative dialogues, and the jeu 
parti, another form of poetic contest. This borrowed lit- 
erature, in which so many of the contemporaries of Philip 
Augustus distinguished themselves, — as the castellan of 
Coucy, Audefroi of Arras, Conon of Bethune, Gace-Brule, 
Hugh of Berze, Hugh of Oisy, and John of Brienne, — dis- 
placed a more original and more savory lyric style which 
sprang from the soil of northern France: the motets, ron- 
deaux, lays, and pastoral poems of the twelfth century. Many 
of these imitators of poetry belonged to the nobility. In 
this seigniorial society, which now began to polish and define 
itself, history uncovers new elements. 

First, the educated woman, herself a patron of letters, 
was no longer an exception in the chateaux. The great 



COURTESY AND THE LETTERED NOBILITY 377 

ladies of the north seemed ambitious to rival the famous 
countess of Die (Beatrice of Valentinois), the hardy, pas- 
sionate poetess of Provence. Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine; 
her daughter, Marie of France, countess of Champagne and 
the inspiration of Christian of Troyes; Blanche of Navarre, 
mother of Thibaud le Chansonnier; and lolande of Flanders, 
to whom was dedicated the romance Guillaume de Palerne, 
attracted and pensioned poets. At Troyes, at Provins, and 
at Bar brilliant gatherings of knights and ladies were held, 
where questions of gallantry and the casuistry of love were 
discussed. Toward 1220, there came out a code of courteous 
love, turned into Latin by Andre le Chapelain. The judg- 
ments of the " courts of love ^' which he cites to the number 
of about twenty, although not resting upon actual fact, were 
yet not purely imaginary. They exhibit a singular state of 
mind, judging from the medley one finds in them of immoral 
theories and right precepts for the softening of customs and 
social intercourse. 

In the high places of feudalism men themselves showed 
taste for intellectual pleasures, appreciated books and those 
who made them, and set themselves to write in prose and 
verse. The counts of Flanders — Philip of Alsace, Baldwin 
VIII, and Baldwin IX, the first Latin emperor — formed a 
dynasty of well-lettered men. Philip of Alsace imparted to 
Christian of Troyes an Anglo-Norman poem, from which the 
latter drew his famous tale Perceval. Baldwin VIII had 
Nicolas of Senlis translate into French a beautiful Latin 
manuscript which he possessed, the Chronique de Turpin. 
Baldwin IX exhibited a particular taste for history and his- 
torians. He had collected summaries of all the Latin 
chronicles relative to the Occident, a sort of historical corpus, 
and had them put into French. Surrounded by players, both 
male and female, whom he paid generously, he himself culti- 
vated poetry, even Provencal poetry. In Auvergne the 
dauphin, Robert I, collected books which constituted a library 
entirely composed of writings relating to the heretical sects, 
which caused doubt about his orthodoxy. 

The petty lords imitated the great. One of the first trou- 
veres who introduced southern lyric poetry into the north 
was a noble of Cambrai, Hugh of Oisy. Conon of Bethune, 



378 SOCIAL FRANCE 

in the lay which he dedicated to the third crusade, curiously 
jumbled the lover 's regrets with the religious sentiments which 
impelled him to the Holy Land. Indeed, the crusader sang 
less to God than to his lady: 

" Alas, Love ! What a cruel leave I must take from the best one 
who was ever loved and served! May the good God restore me 
to her, as surely as I leave her with sorrow. Alas, what have I 
said? I am not leaving her. If the body goes to serve our Lord 
the heart remains entirely in her power. On to Syria, sighing for 
her." 

It is, indeed, a long cry from the chanson de Boland to 
this; the wild enthusiasm of the barons of the first crusade 
is well calmed. 

The noble warriors of the eleventh and twelfth centuries 
left to their chaplains or the monks who followed the army 
the task of relating the exploits of Christian chivalry, and 
this is how the crusaders of the time of Philip Augustus 
wrote in good prose and in brief, picturesque language the 
description of the great events in which they had taken part. 
A baron of Champagne, Lord Geoffrey of Villehardouin ; a 
petty knight of Picardy, Robert of Clary; and a prince of 
Flanders, Henry of Valenciennes, who became emperor of 
Constantinople, described the fourth crusade for us. 

The type of this noble, civilized and softened by the be- 
ginning of a literary culture, is Baldwin II, count of Guines, 
of whom Lambert of Ardres has left us in his chronicle the 
curious portrait which we have before had occasion to men- 
tion.^ This baron was not only occupied with his dogs, his 
falcons, and his concubines, but, like his suzerains, the counts 
of Flanders, he had intellectual tastes. He lived surrounded 
by clerks, savants, and theologians, of whom he was very 
fond and with whom he was ever in argument: 

" The clerics had taught him more things than were necessary, 
and he passed his time questioning them, in making them talk, and 
in puzzHng them with his objections. He coped with masters of 
arts, as well as with doctors of theology; so well, indeed, that his 
interlocutors listened with enthusiasm, crying : * What a man ! We 

^Chapter IX. ^ 



COURTESY AND THE LETTERED NOBILITY 379 

cannot but overwhelm him with praises, for he says wonderful things. 
But how can he, being neither a cleric, nor an educated man, under- 
stand literature in this way ? ' " 

He attracted to his court one of the great scholars of the 
land, Landri of Waben ; had him translate the Canticles into 
the vernacular, and often made him read passages from it, 
** in order to comprehend its mystic virtue." Another 
scholar, Onfroi, translated for him fragments of the Gospels 
and the life of Saint Anthony ; these texts were explained to 
him and he grasped them. Master Godfrey put into French 
for him a Latin work treating of physics. The Latin gram- 
marian, Solin, author of the Polyhistor, a sort of potpourri 
of science, history, and geography, was translated and read 
in his presence by one of the celebrities of Flanders, the 
cleric Simon of Boulogne, one of the authors of the romance 
Alexandre. 

The biographer of Baldwin of Guines was astonished at 
the number of manuscripts which the count had collected in 
his library: 

" He had so many and he knew them so well, that he would have 
been able to compete with Augustine in theology, with Denis the 
Areopagite in philosophy, with Thales of Milet * in the art of telling 
droll stories. He could have demonstrated to the most celebrated 
players his knowledge of chansons de geste and tales. For his libra- 
rian he had a layman, Hasard of Audrehem, whom he himself 
trained." 

Finally, a work, the nature of which the chronicler forgot 
to explain, was composed at the chateau of Ardres, at the 
instigation and under the eyes of the count, by a cleric, Mas- 
ter Walter Silens: 

"After his name, the book was called the Livre du silence, and 
it gained for its author the recognition of the master, who over- 
whelmed him with horses and vestments." 

Though hyperbolic, this praise is not immaterial to history. 
Feudalism here appears in a new aspect. We shall not con- 
elude that all the nobles of this time became protectors of 

* Thales for Aristides; an error of the good cur6 of Ardres. 



380 SOCIAL FRANCE 

art, literature, and science. While the elite, partly through 
conviction, partly through snobbishness, protected literature, 
became educated and showed to woman — at least, in litera- 
ture — a respect to which she had not been accustomed, the 
majority of lords loved only war and pillage. The cultured 
noble class and the brutal violent herd were to live side by 
side for a long time to come, but it is already a curious sight 
to see a part of the feudal world trying to break away from 
its traditions of barbarism and making an effort to trans- 
form itself. 



CHAPTER XIII 
PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 

At the time of Philip Augustus and during the greater 
part of the middle ages properly so-called — ^that is, to the 
end of the thirteenth century — the social question did not 
exist, in the sense that it was not raised by any one and 
that it did not affect public opinion. How could it be other- 
wise? The opinion of the laboring classes, of those who 
would gain by a change, could not make itself felt ; they had 
no spokesman. Besides that, it must be remembered that 
the middle ages were essentially conservative, and that, as 
a matter of principle, they did not seek to progress. Its most 
general and persistent belief was that all innovation was 
dangerous, bad in itself, and that one must hold to old things, 
to that which had always existed. The middle age had the 
cult of tradition: it distrusted everything derogatory to cus- 
toms and established rights; it was altogether hostile to 
changes. To be sure, we see some serfs and some burghers 
working for their emancipation and especially for the im- 
provement of their lot by pacific or forceful means; but 
this change, this evolution, or this revolution, was uncon- 
scious or instinctive on the part of the inferior classes, and 
was produced by necessity, not by virtue of a principle, a 
rational conception of the needs of society and the rights 
of the disinherited. They were not working to realize a 
theory, a social ideal, but to give satisfaction to their personal 
desires, whether those of one man or those of a group. Each 
worked for himself and cared little for his neighbor: this it 
is which, among other things, explains why the French vil- 
lages which established the communal regime were not united 
in vast urban confederations as were the villages of Germany 
and Italy at certain times. 

The single theory recognized by all, the single social con- 
ception in force in the France of the middle ages, was not 

381 



382 SOCIAL FRANCE 

a theory of progress or of movement, but quite the contrary: 
it was the status quo. Men approved the state of things 
which had existed for a time, which every one believed to 
be immemorial, and they firmly adhered to it. This social 
theory, consecrated by tradition, which had been set forth 
by the publicists of the church from Bishop Adalberon of 
Laon, contemporary of Hugh Capet, to the preacher Jacques 
of Vitry, a contemporary of Philip Augustus, could be sum- 
marized as follows: Society is divided by Divine Will into 
three classes or castes, each of which has its proper function 
and which is necessary to the existence and life of the social 
bodies: the priests, who are charged with prayer and con- 
ducting mankind to salvation; the nobles, on whom devolves 
the mission of defending the nation by arms against its ene- 
mies and causing justice and order to reign; the people, the 
peasants and burghers, who by their labor nourish the two 
upper classes and satisfy all their desires for luxuries as well 
as necessities. It was extremely simple. Sometimes, how- 
ever, the clergy varied the formula and gave it a meta- 
morphical turn— such, for example, as that we find in John 
of Salisbury and Jacques of Vitry. Society was like the 
human body: the priests were the head and eyes, because 
they were the spiritual guides of humanity; the nobles were 
the hands and arms, charged with protecting the others ; the 
people of the country and the towns formed the legs and feet — 
that is to say, the base upon which all the rest stood. 

This is the order of things instituted by Providence, con- 
sequently necessary and immutable. There is nothing to 
change. It is entirely exceptional that from time to time 
some hardy spirit dares to conceive of other things. Recall 
the preacher of the beginning of the thirteenth century, 
whom we mentioned above (Chapter VIII). He wished that 
the nobles and wealthy burghers could be eliminated from 
society, — the nobles in so far as they were brigands, the 
bourgeoisie in so far as they were usurers, — since both did 
nothing and were detrimental to the rest ; so that only priests 
and laborers, those who worked spiritually and manually, 
remained. This is an individual fancy, and these fancies 
were very rare. General sentiment knew only the theory 
of the three castes; those who prayed, those who fought, and 



PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 383 

those who nourished and clothed the other two. All was thus 
harmoniously ordained, and the middle age condemned those 
who would derange this harmony. It did not comprehend 
them and considered them enemies of society. Only a few 
preachers and satirists from time to time took the liberty of 
saying that practice did not correspond very closely to the 
theory ; that the three bodies did not accommodate themselves 
to their tasks as they should : that the priests left the domain 
of prayer too freely, neglected the services, and preached 
too little by their example ; that the nobles, the soldiers, in- 
stead of confining themselves to repelling the enemy and 
policing the land, thought only of fighting amongst them- 
selves and of trampling the feeble under foot; that, finally, 
the people of the country paid too many tithes to the clergy, 
and that the people of the towns were too much inclined 
to seek emancipation from the seigniorial yoke and to en- 
croach on the rights and properties of churchmen. Evi- 
dently, all the wheels of this social mechanism did not 
revolve as they should and as the theory intended, and all 
was not perfect in this world of feudalism and the church. 
But the middle ages had no thought that these fundamentals 
could be changed, that this hierarchy could be injured, or 
that the lower classes for instance had not been made ex- 
clusively to work for the benefit of the other two. Every- 
thing was well regulated, because it was ruled by God. The 
vices and disorders in the operation of society came solely 
from the feebleness or the pride of men: all would be well if 
each one conscientiously fulfilled his duty, confined himself to 
his task, and did not seek to leave his class. 

Here is the first reason, a general reason, why the true 
middle age — the period which preceded the fourteenth cen- 
tury — did not know of the social question: it was not on 
principle occupied with improving the moral and material 
conditions of the common people. It held to the universally 
accepted dogma of the necessary and divine immutability of 
society. 

Another reason, which we have already tacitly indicated 
above, was that the only opinions which were declared and 
known were those of the privileged classes. But these classes 
did not only not comprehend the utility of a change, but 



384 SOCIAL FEANCE 

were even indifferent to the miserable lot of the wretched 
third class. They were more than indifferent: they despised 
the peasants and burghers while they exploited them, and 
their contempt often turned into hostility. Disdain, even 
disgust, on the part of the proprietor and seignior for the 
cultivator and artisan whose work supported him is one of 
the most characteristic features of the middle age. 

To the knight or baron the peasant, serf or free, was only 
a source of revenue, of income: in time of peace they op- 
pressed him at home as much as they could with imposts 
and corvees; in time of war in foreign territories they pil- 
laged, murdered, burnt, trampled upon him, in order to 
inflict the greatest possible destruction upon the adversary. 
It was of this that war consisted. The peasant was a creature 
to exploit at home, and to destroy abroad, and nothing more. 

The burgher was also regarded as a source of revenue. He 
was spared a little more because he stood together with many 
others behind walls. He was less of a prize and succeeded 
better in defending himself. On their side, the nobles had 
need of the products of his industry and trade. They com- 
menced also to understand that there was a profit for the 
seignior in facilitating the development of towns. When 
the burgher was rich, and they could not extract money from 
him by imposts or brutal force, they borrowed from him; 
they used him as a banker, whom they repaid partially or 
not at all. All of which did not prevent the noble from 
despising the burgher and from pillaging and burning the 
towns, if war furnished an occasion for it. 

This is how feudalism looked upon and treated the villein ; 
this is the bald truth. It is reflected very accurately in lit- 
erature. If one opens no matter what chanson de geste of 
the time of Philip Augustus, more than anything else one 
observes the peasant and burgher playing the role of victim. 
Descriptions of pillaging and burning of country and town 
abound. And there is not a word of pity for the peasants 
whose houses and crops are burned and who are massacred 
by hundreds or carried away with feet and wrists in bonds; 
for the women tortured by the soldiers, for burning cities, 
for despoiled merchants, or for the common people of the 
feudal armies, the worthless prisoners who were mutilated 



PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 385 

or murdered in cold blood after the battle : all this is normal, 
is right; it is the natural course of things. 

The inferior classes are not only victimized; they are dis- 
graced. It is clear that in the eyes of the noble the villein is 
a kind of inferior being, wholly despicable, whose life does 
not count. In our oldest feudal epics, in the Chanson de 
Eoland, men and things of the lower order do not find a 
place. This submerged humanity is not worth the trouble 
of being described: it does not exist. Beginning with the 
middle of the twelfth century, when the lords willingly or 
by force granted the people the first franchises and when 
the first communes were founded, feudal poets were forced 
to note that the villein existed and lived, but they made an 
insignificant place for him and mentioned him only to ridi- 
cule him. But this was hardly true at the time of Philip 
Augustus; even at the beginning of the thirteenth century, 
when franchises multiplied and the burghers became more 
important, their manner of writing and speaking tended to 
change. In the great majority of minstrels' lays which date 
from this period contempt for the ' ' villein ' ' is the prevailing 
sentiment: it expresses itself by means of commonplaces and 
stereotyped phrases, which are found in abundance. 

It would be easy to cite some hundreds of passages in all 
kinds of literature in which the spirit of feudalism exhibits 
itself in the most brutal form. It was the tradition that the 
villein could not, even in physique, be anything else than 
disagreeable to the eyes and different from others. One can- 
not conceive of him otherwise. He is ugly, repugnant, and 
grotesque. See how the chanson, Garin le Lorrain, the typical 
war poem, represents the villein Rigaut: 

" He had enormous arms and massive limbs, his eyes were sepa- 
rated from each other a hand's breadth, his shoulders were large, 
his chest deep, his hair bristling, and his face black as coal. He 
went for six months without bathing; none but rain water ever 
touched his face." 

This villein is, however, a rugged warrior; it is apparent 
to all the nobles, and for this reason the poet condescends 
to allow him to play a certain role in battles. He even per- 
formed so many feats that, as an exception to the rule, it 



386 SOCIAL FRANCE 

was decided to dub him knight. But he is not a knight like 
others, and we have previously noted the violent and ridicu- 
lous scene which took place at his knighting and which evoked 
the laughter of all the nobility. 

Another description of a villein uses almost the same lan- 
guage: this is the charming idyl of Aucassiti et Nicollete. 
Aucassin, lost in the midst of a forest, all at once finds himself 
in the presence of a peasant: 



" He was large and marvelously ugly and hideous. He had a 
huge head, blacker than coal, the space of a palm between his eyes, 
large cheeks, a great flat nose, large lips redder than Hve coals, 
long, hideous, and yellow teeth. His clothing and shoes were of 
cow-hide, and a large cape enveloped him. He leaned on a great 
club." 



The morals of the , villein corresponded to his physique. 
He was both stupid and vicious. He uttered the most enor- 
mous follies. The author of Miracles de Notre-Dame, Gau- 
tier of Coincy, a contemporary of Philip Augustus and a 
holy man, said of the villeins, " They have such hard heads 
and stupid brains that nothing can penetrate them. " " How 
could the villein be gentle and free? " we read in Escoufle, 
a romance of adventure composed before 1214. In the 
chanson Girart de Boussillon the traitor who delivers the 
chateau of Roussillon to King Charles Martel is necessarily 
a villein by birth, and on this occasion the author does not 
spare a remark to the effect that it is always dangerous to 
rely on this breed. This, too, is a commonplace in the 
ehanson de geste. In the poem Girart de Viane, as in most 
others, villein is synonymous with coward: " Cursed be he 
who was the first archer; he was a coward and did not dare 
to come to close range." This contempt of the nobles for 
the foot-soldiers who were used in the van of all feudal 
armies shows itself on all occasions. For example, in the poem 
Gaufrey: " There were sixty thousand knights, not counting 
the foot-soldiers, of whom no count was taken." These 
foot-soldiers, these archers, these common soldiers, of whom 
the poets so willingly make fun, formed the base and value- 
less element of the army; they were relegated to the out- 



PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 387 

skirts of the camp on the waste lands ; and in action, if they 
were in the way, the knights unhesitatingly rode over their 
bodies. Throughout the middle ages the nobles had this 
habit. They did not wait for the great battles of the Hun- 
dred Years' War to disgrace and abuse the unhappy foot- 
soldiers. 

It would seem that in the romances of adventure of the 
Breton cycle, in which the nobility appears less ferocious 
and less gross and talks the language of courtesy, the senti- 
ment of scornful hostility toward the villein would be milder 
and more reserved. But here the tone is not sensibly dif- 
ferent, and, in the poems of Christian of Troyes and of his 
imitators at the beginning of the thirteenth century, masses 
of villeins are seen giving way before knights like flocks 
of frightened beasts. We read in Erec: " The count came 
to the place. He came to the villeins and threatened them. 
He held a rod in his hand, and the villeins fell back." And 
in CUges a noble says to his man: " You are my serf, I am 
your lord, and I can give and sell you and your body and 
take your belongings like things which are mine." In ro- 
mances of the courteous class, the conception of the social 
order is almost as hard on the peasant as in the martial poems. 

The burghers or townsmen were no better treated than 
countrymen. In the eyes of the lords a burgher could only 
be a drunkard, a thief, and a usurer. So it is that in the 
lay, Aiol, they represent the butcher Hagenel and his wife 
Hersent as malicious slanderers. They were feared and 
detested. 



" Dame Hersent, wife of a butcher of Orleans, a woman with a 
large paunch, was a slanderer. Both were natives of Burgundy. 
When they came to the great city of Orleans they did not have 
five sous. They were wretched, begging, weeping, dying of hunger; 
but by their thrift, they profited so much through usury that in 
five years they had amassed a fortune. They had two-thirds of the 
town under mortgage; everywhere they purchased ovens and miUs, 
and displaced honest men." 



But Dame Hersent, seeing Knight Aiol pass, insulted him 
on a crowded street, and the knight angrily answered her 



388 SOCIAL FBANCE 

in the same language, " You are hideous and ugly and im- 
pudent," a whole litany of insults. 

This is how the feudal bard, who wished to please the 
nobles, describes the rich burgher, the man who advanced 
himself by his thrift and who was to constitute a great power 
in the third estate. If, in place of a villein by birth, he 
describes a degenerate noble, degraded and transformed into 
a villein by contact with the lower class, the portrait is no- 
more flattering. Everything that touches this infamous class 
is contaminated. One of the comic elements of the song 
Garin is the courier or messenger Maumel, surnamed Galopin 
or Tranchebise — the type of the degenerate, naturally a very- 
bad character, though coming from a good family. This 
frequenter of taverns loved only gaming and drinking and 
he lived among the ribalds. Some one went to rouse him in 
his hovel, to tell him that Duke Begon, his first cousin, needed 
him and had sent for him, ' ' He my cousin ! ' ' answered the 
young truant. " I disown him, I do not need so rich a 
relative. I like the tavern, the joy of wine, and the license 
which surrounds me better than all the duchies on earth." 
By paying his expenses at the tavern, however, they per- 
suaded him to come away. Duke Begon, his cousin, said 
to him, ' * Where are you from, good friend ? " " From Cler- 
mont, seignior. I am called Galopin. My brother is Count 
Joscelin; I am his senior, and one would scarcely doubt it 
upon seeing me." " I am on bad terms with him," answered 
Begon. " I, however, recognize that you are my cousin and, 
if you are willing to stop your follies, I will make you a 
knight and give you your part of Auvergne." Galopin at 
these words burst into laughter and said : ' * I would infinitely 
rather drink and listen to courtesans than have a county; 
but say what you want of me or I will return to wine." 
They charged him with a message for the king of France at 
Orleans. As soon as the mission was fulfilled he went 
straight to the tavern, where he spent the whole night. Dame 
Heloise sent for him and said, '' Where do you come from, 
my friend? " " From the tavern, dame." " God, what a 
sight! But I have five hundred casks of wine, of which 
you shall have all you want." '' By the Heart of Saint- 
Denis," answered Manuel, " I love wine, but I also love 



PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 389 

good company." The lady heard him and laughed 
" indulgently." 



We are now informed on the sentiments and actions of 
the nobles. It remains to learn the feelings of the other 
privileged class, the churchmen. Two currents must be dis- 
tinguished here: the ecclesiastical and the feudal. 

The Christian current is that collection of ideas on the 
family, the state, and humanity which flowed from the same 
source as Christianity and which the clergy of the middle 
ages still professed and could not disavow, in spite of the 
change which primitive religion had undergone in the ten 
centuries which followed the fall of the Roman Empire. 
There always was an ecclesiastical theory on the original 
equality of men, on their fraternal duties, on the evil of 
wealth and of power, on the necessity of succoring the poor 
and the unfortunate, and of protecting the weak against the 
strong. Clerics of the time of Philip Augustus could not 
altogether forget that the Founder of their religion had 
preached the respect of the weak and humble, had exalted 
poverty, and given the church an essentially democratic basis. 
Whatever was the depth of the gulf, well-nigh an abyss, which 
separated the church of the twelfth from that of the first 
three centuries of our era, the evangelical spirit had not 
completely disappeared from the mass of Catholic priesthood. 
In short, however aristocratic certain of its parts had be- 
come, the clergy of the middle ages was still recruited from 
all levels of society; it was not closed to the lower classes. 
By alms and hospitality it continued to fulfil one of its high- 
est missions, that of relieving human misery: for it bore the 
whole burden of public charity. The evangelical spirit also 
found a way of making itself felt in an important part of 
the monastic clergy: it inspired religious reform. Did it 
not at the very time of Philip Augustus raise up Francis of 
Assisi, the apostle of poverty and renunciation, the man who 
wished to found a new church on charity, on love, on human 
cooperation, in short on a kind of Christian communism di- 
rectly inspired by the Gospels and Christ? 

On the other hand, it must be remembered that the 



390 SOCIAL FRANCE 

church often identified her cause with that of the exploited 
classes; for it was especially her peasants and her lands 
which were victims of the brutality and eovetousness of the 
nobles. In defending them, in excommunicating the nobles, 
in creating institutions of peace, it is true that she was de- 
fending herself and that she was moved by her own interests ; 
still, by the fact that she fought to diminish oppression and 
violence, she rendered a service to the unfortunates. Out of 
this came the indignant Philippics of the preachers against 
the nobles who lived by brigandage, and their eloquent ap- 
peals in favor of the peasants and the artisans. 

But one must also consider another side of the ecclesias- 
tical life and feeling, for there are other things and other 
facts which prove that in reality the clerics of the middle 
ages showed almost as much cruelty to the peasants and 
burghers as did the men of the sword. In fact, the feudal 
conception prevailed in the church, which consisted of the 
priesthood. The sentiments and the acts of the privileged 
religious aristocracy dominated. This aristocracy, proprietor 
of considerable lands and enormous numbers of serfs, both 
male and female, was an integral part of the feudal system. 
It sought to preserve its rights and revenues; it defended 
them with jealous harshness, and succeeded all the better be- 
cause the lands were inalienable. It also harshly exploited 
the inferior classes: no one has as yet been able to demon- 
strate that the serfs of the church were better off than those 
of the lay lords, and it is absolutely certain that the bondage 
of the church endured for a much longer time than that of 
the nobles and the king. There were even found some clerics 
who upheld serfdom, not only as a necessary and legitimate, 
but as a divine institution. Finally, the famous theory of 
the three classes had been drawn up by churchmen, repeated 
century after century in their writings, and maintained by 
them as though it were the expression of the will of God 
and of the social law. 

It is enough to give a page from one of the most intelligent 
and educated prelates France had known up to the end of 
the twelfth century — ^the historian, bishop, and philosopher, 
John of Salisbury, In it we find this metaphor on the social 
body and its members: 



PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 391 

" I call the feet of the state those who, exercising the humble 
professions, contribute to the terrestrial progress of the state and 
its members. These are the laborers, constantly attached to the 
soil, the artisans who work in wool or wood, iron or brass, those 
who are charged with the care of maintaining us, those who make 
the thousands of objects necessary to life. It is the duty of the 
inferiors to respect their superiors, but these in their turn must 
come to the aid of those who are below them and devise means 
of caring for their needs. Plutarch rightly gives the advice to be 
thoughtful of the humble, that is to say, of that part of the nation 
which is most numerous, the smaller number always yielding to the 
greater. Out of this has come the institution of magistrates whose 
duty it is to protect the lowest of subjects against injustice so that 
the work of the artisans may procure good shoes for the state. 
The commonwealth is in some sort unshod when the laborers and 
artisans are a prey to injustice. There is nothing more shameful 
for those who conduct the magistracy. When the mass of people 
are afflicted it is as if the prince suffered from the gout." 



These are the terms in which clerics speak of social prob- 
lems when they speak of them at all. This is all that a 
bishop finds to say in teaching the privileged classes their 
duty and in advising them not to trample too ruthlessly on 
the people. 

Finally, it is well established that, in theory as in fact, 
the church continued to be hostile to the emancipation of 
burghers; church lords who freed their burghers were even 
less numerous than lay lords. They were equally opposed 
to the liberation of industry and to the erection of bodies 
of independent handicrafts: observe, for example, what a 
prolonged resistance an ecclesiastical seigniory like the abbey 
of Saint-Maixent was compelled to make to secure the sup- 
pression of the fiscal rights which ground down the artisans 
of their domain. 

In fact, churchmen did not have a political economy which 
was higher or more generous than that of the laity: not only 
did the bishops and abbots always hinder the communal move- 
ment — which need not surprise us, since it was almost al- 
ways directed against the property and the jurisdiction of the 
church, — but the most authoritative organs of the church, 
in speaking of the burghers and the communes, used the same 
insulting and spiteful terms as the feudal poets. To Jacques 



392 SOCIAL FRANCE 

of Vitry they are all usurers, robbers, and, worse still, 
heretics. 

" This detestable race of men go directly to their ruin ; none 
among them, or at least very few, will be saved : they all march 
with great strides toward hell. How, indeed, could they ever expiate 
the iniquities and villainies of which they are guilty? We see them 
all, already singed by hell-fire, seeking the destruction of their 
neighbors, destroying the cities and other communes which they 
persecute, and rejoicing at the death of others. Most of the com- 
munes make desperate war: all of them, men and women, are 
happy over the ruin of their enemies. . . . The commune is like 
the lion of which the Scriptures speak, which brutally devours, and 
also like the dragon which hides itself in the sea and seeks to 
devour you. It is an animal whose tail ends in a point capable of 
hurting its neighbor and the stranger, but the multiple heads rear 
themselves against each other: for in the same commune they envy, 
slander, supplant, deceive, harass, and destroy each other. Without 
they have war; within, terror. But what is detestable above every- 
thing else in these modern Babyions is that there is not a commune 
where heresy does not find her adherents, her followers, her de- 
fenders, her believers." 

We abridge this passage: it is a mixture of the true and 
the false; but it gives us the spirit of the church and her 
feeling toward the most evident progress which the popular 
masses had realized. It is, then, entirely true that the privi- 
leged classes were hostile to social changes and that the lower 
classes could count only on their own labor and energies for 
an improvement of their condition. 



The peasants led the hardest and most miserable existence. 
We see them defenseless against the calamities of nature, 
the victims of brigandage and feudal wars, succumbing under 
the exploitation of the nobles and the lords of the church: 
a threefold or fourfold exploitation, because they had at the 
same time to pay and serve their direct lord, the high 
suzerain of the province, the cure of the parish and his supe- 
riors, and in addition suffered the unreasonable demands of 
the seigniorial officials, the provost and forester, more an- 
noying and rapacious than the master of the fief. Finally, 
if the peasant was a serf — and he usually was in most of 



PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 393 

the French provinces at the beginning of the thirteenth cen- 
tury, — to all this there must be added the shame of servitude, 
which is an hereditary blemish; the odious and humiliating 
exactions, the legal disability of marrying, of moving about, 
and of making wills; and even then we have an inadequate 
idea of the complexity of the misfortunes and the miseries 
in which the peasants struggled. 

This lamentable situation historians and chroniclers con- 
vey to us indirectly and unconsciously, by implication in 
the ordinary narration of episodes of brigandage or deeds 
of war. In reading them one soon divines that they did not 
clearly see the evil and the sufferings caused by the quarrels 
and conquests of lords and kings. Clerics who wrote history 
did not stop at these details, and they have not a word of 
pity for the victims. It is exceptional for the trouvere, 
Benedict of Sainte-More, writing the history of the dukes of 
Normandy in French verse, to state the sad condition of the 
class of men who labored and suffered to minister to the needs 
of the clergy and nobility. 

" It is certain that the preachers and knights have greater abun- 
dance to eat, and to clothe and shoe themselves, that they Uve more 
tranquilly and more securely than the laborers who have so much 
misfortune and sorrow. It is the latter who enable the others 
to live, who nourish and sustain them; and yet, they endure the 
severest tempests, snows, rains, tornadoes; they till the earth with 
their hands, with great pain and hunger. They lead a thoroughly 
wretched life, poor, suffering, and beggarly. Without this race of 
men I truly do not know how the others could exist." 

The preachers in their sermons give us more of the facts. 
They often forcefully denounced all cruelty, not so much 
out of compassion and charity, out of pity for the social 
misery of their auditors, as out of the satisfaction it gave 
them to condemn the nobility, the military class, the enemies 
of the church and ravishers of her lands. The clerics, them- 
selves victims of the brigandage of the knights, defended 
their property and their cause by speaking boldly of the 
sufferings of the country people. It is difficult to go further 
than the preacher Jacques of Vitry, for instance, in a ser- 
mon addressed to the mighty and the nobles, in which he 



394 SOCIAL FRANCE 

says: " You are ravening wolves, and that is why you shall 
howl in hell, . . . Everything the peasant has in a year 
gained by hard labor, the lord wastes in an hour." He did 
not spare the pilferers of the peasant, " those men who, 
by their iniquitous exactions and rapaeiousness, despoil and 
oppress their subjects, who live on the blood and the sweat of 
the poor." He flayed the masters who took mortmain, those 
** robbers of the goods of the dead," with particular vehe- 
mence. Taking mortmain is nothing less than taking the 
livelihood of the widow and the orphan! It is homicide; 
nay, more than that, it is sacrilege. These men outrage the 
souls of the dead, " Like vultures they feed upon corpses," 
According to the preacher, the lords did not content them- 
selves with fleecing the peasant: they jested and practised 
harsh pleasantries at his expense. 

"Many say to us when we reproaeh them with taking the poor 
laborer's eow : ' What is he complaining of, seeing that I left him 
his calf, and his life has been spared. I have not done him the 
evil I could have done had I wished. I have taken the bird and have 
left him the feathers.' Take care, my brethren, that you mock not 
the Lord God. These peasants have indeed to be your men; you 
must not oppress them nor cruelly abuse their servitude. The great 
must be friendly to the small and not make themselves hated. They 
must not despise the humble, for if these can render service they 
can also be dangerous." 

Sage words these, but they moved no one. These invec- 
tives of the preacher at least prove how profound was the 
evil. " Everywhere," says he, " one sees the strong op- 
pressing the weak, and the great devouring the small. ' ' This, 
briefly, is a description of medieval society. 

The peasant was the scapegoat of that society. It was 
chiefly on him that the iniquities and violence, the disorder 
and general anarchy fell. It seems, then, that the priest 
when addressing himself to this unfortunate class should, 
above everything else, have brought them words of sym- 
pathy, of encouragement, and of consolation. With this in 
mind, it is illuminating to read an unpublished sermon which 
Jacques of Vitry wrote for the peasants and laborers, ad 
agricolas et operarios.^ One is thoroughly imdeceived on 
^ Bibl. nat., ms. latin 17509, fol. 124. 



PEASANTS AND BUKGHERS 395 

reading it. There is no evidence of compassionate sympathy 
in it; not the slightest allusion to the sufferings of country- 
folk. The preacher begins by telling them that manual la- 
bor is a good thing, because it is recommended by Holy Writ, 
and because, without it, the state could not exist. He re- 
minds them that, as a consequence of Adam's sin, labor 
was imposed on his descendants as an expiation, and that the 
Lord said, " Thou shalt eat thy bread in the sweat of thy 
brow." He no doubt thinks that he is paying them a great 
compliment when he adds : ' ' "When the peasant works the 
soil with the intention of performing this penitence enjoined 
on man by the Lord, he deserves as much merit as the cleric 
who chants all day in church or who keeps the matins at 
night. ' ' And he closes his preface with the declaration : " I 
have seen many poor laborers who by their work supported 
their wives and children; they took greater pains than the 
monks in their cloisters or the clerics in their churches." 
After all, this comparison of the wretches who tilled the soil 
with churchmen was a bold step, for which we have Jacques 
of Yitry to thank. He thus raised the peasant in his own 
eyes. 

Only, one will notice that he does not pity them, that he 
does not encourage them in enduring their misery. This 
guide of souls especially sought the correction of their faults ; 
his sermon is a satire and in it he puts his finger directly on 
the evil. The principal vice of the peasants is cupidity and 
avarice: this is what makes them commit so many acts of 
injustice. He pictures them as losing their souls in order 
to gain a patch of land. This one encroaches on the field of 
his neighbor, with the object of taking a few feet from him; 
another moves the boundaries to his own advantage ; a third 
allows his animals to graze on a pasture which does not 
belong to him. He blames them all for not having charitable 
hearts. Why not permit the beggar to glean after the har- 
vest in the fields and vineyards? Why not give the poor 
a small part of their harvests, God's portion? In place of 
giving their old clothes to the needy they would rather let 
them rot. And when they hire workmen they treat them 
badly, pay them poorly or not at all. As for the day la- 
borers, they likewise have no conscience: when the farmer 



396 SOCIAL FRANCE 

is there they make haste and take care, but when he turns 
his back they do nothing at all, segnes sunt et otiosi. 

These reproaches are not those which in reality come clos- 
est to the heart of churchmen. They had two other much 
more serious grievances against the peasant: the first was 
that he was loth to pay his tithe, and that he did not acquit 
himself as he should of his religious duties. For example, 
he had not enough respect for the law of Sunday observ- 
ance. Jacques of Vitry was compelled to speak of it. 

" Take care that avarice does not lead you into working on 
Sundays and holidays. You must do no menial work on these 
days: you must work only for your soul's salvation. You shall 
neither buy nor sell unless it be necessary for your subsistence on 
that day; even then you will do better by conducting your business 
the eve before. There should be no marketing, no business, no 
sessions of the court on holidays. Even animals should rest. Cart- 
ing on Sundays is forbidden." 

But the preacher adds a reservation, which is typical of the 
time. 

" Unless you are obliged to labor or harvest, unless the enemy 
captures and kills the laborers of the fields on week-days and 
leaves you only Sundays to work in safety; for necessity makes 
law." 

But how could any one tell what were holidays? There 
were so many of them ! The means, answers Jacques of Vitry, 
is to go regularly to church on Sundays: the priest will tell 
you of the holidays and which of them are to be celebrated. 
Unfortunately, there are those among you who are so negli- 
gent, so barbarous that they rarely set foot inside of a church. 
These do not know what days are holidays. At most, they 
discover it when they no longer see the carts in the field or 
hear the sound of wood-chopping. There are some peasants 
who not only work on holidays, but, seeing others go to mass, 
profit by their absence to steal: as there is no one in the 
fields and vineyards, these marauders plunder the vines and 
orchards at the expense of their neighbors. 

These are interesting sidelights on the ethics of the peas- 
ants of the beginning of the thirteenth century. But why 



PEASANTS AND BURGHEKS 397 

be astonished that these beings, degraded by servitude, daily- 
oppression, and by perpetual terror, had low morals? One 
very liberal cleric, who composed the famous Latin poem 
Eelene et Ganymede, about this time said that peasants were 
only a species of cattle (rustici, qui pecudes possunt appel- 
lari). He confesses that, in certain cases, the manner of 
living and the habits of these wretches were not of a quality 
to raise them in the estimation of the dominant classes. 
There is an interesting passage in the treatise of the abbot 
of Aumone, Philip of Harvengt, on the continence of clerics, 
in which he states the following fact: 

" Last year several of our brothers were sent to certain parts of 
Flanders to attend to some of the business of our church. It was 
in summer. They saw most of the peasants walking about in the 
streets and on the squares of villages without a bit of clothing, 
not even trousers, in order to keep cool; thus naked they attended 
to their business not in the least disturbed at the glances of passers- 
by nor by the prohibitions of their mayors. When our brothers 
indignantly asked them why they went thus naked like animals 
they answered : * What business is it of yours ? You do not make 
laws for us.' " 

And the abbot adds by way of moral : ' * What astonishes me 
is not the bestial impudence of these peasants ; it is the abso- 
lutely reprehensible tolerance of those who see them and do 
not prevent their going about in this way." 

But the masters of the soil and the seigniory little cared 
about the fashion in which this human herd lived. The only 
things which interested them were the services and the money 
they drew from them. The population, liable to forced labor 
and taxation, could live just as bestially as it pleased : it suf- 
ficed if it fulfilled its obligations. No more was demanded. 



The class of literature which is comic and often indecent, 
but always full of fact, is, next to sermons, the only his- 
torical source which informs us with any precision on the 
material and moral conditions of the peasant. All that one 
can say is that it is not favorable to him, because it is espe- 
cially a bourgeois literature, and the burgher of the time 



398 SOCIAL FRANCE 

had the same contempt for the rustic as had the feudal lord. 
Besides, the narrators generally emphasized only the physical 
and moral deformities of country-folk. They pictured them 
as ridiculous and badly formed. See how the author of Aloul 
treats them: " They have one squint eye and the other is 
blind. They have a shifty look. They have one good foot 
and the other twisted. ' ' Their filth was repulsive. A villein, 
leading some donkeys in Montpellier through the street of 
the Epiciers, passed before a shop where some varlets were 
pounding odoriferous herbs and spices in a mortar; he im- 
mediately fainted, suffocated by the odors to which he was 
unaccustomed. To bring him back to consciousness nothing 
more was necessary than to put a shovelful of manure under 
his nose : at once he recovered, thinking himself in his ele- 
ment. The moral of the story is that " no one should leave 
his place." Later, Rutebeuf says, in one of his fables, that 
the devil did not want the villeins in hell because they smelled 
too badly. 

The railleries concerning him are often malicious. They 
do not even admit that he ate good food. " They were 
obliged to eat thistles, briars, thorns, and ordinary straw; on 
Sundays they had hay. One should see them grazing on the 
fields with the horned cattle, on all fours and wholly naked. ' ' 
They are disagreeable, always discontented and critical. 
" Everything displeases them, everything tires them. They 
cry for good times, but hate the rain. They hate God if 
He does not do everything they want just as they want it." 
Their stupidity passes all bounds: for example, that of the 
villein of Bailleul, whose wife made him believe that he was 
dead. They were gross and brutal, treating their wives like 
beasts of burden. One of them, without being angry, 
dragged his wife by her hair and showered her with blows, 
on the principle: she must have some occupation while I 
work in the field; unoccupied she would think of evil things. 
If I beat her, she will weep the whole day long, which will 
make the time pass; and, on my return in the evening, she 
will be the more tender. This agrees perfectly with the theory 
about women of the authors of fables; she was considered 
an inferior creature, whom one could beat without giving 
food. One story literally says: '* God took woman from 



PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 399 

Adam's side; but one bone does not feel blows and has 
no need of food." 

However, these savage natures are sometimes interesting. 
The peasant of literature is not always stupid; he is some- 
times represented as a jovial, good fellow; clever, insolent 
even to the mighty, and knowing how to get his revenge. 
One of the stories tells of a lord who held a full court and 
free table which caused his avaricious and grumbling seneschal, 
furious at such liberality, to receive those who presented 
themselves in a very ill-humor. He addressed an ugly, filthy 
peasant, who did not know where to seat himself, with gross 
invective and concluded his remarks by giving him a 
" buffet " — that is, a slap on the face — and said to him, 
" Seat yourself at that buffet yonder," the word buffet hav- 
ing two meanings. Now, the lord had agreed to give a scar- 
let robe to the person adjudged to be the author of the best 
farce. Minstrels and storytellers all took their turn. 
Finally, the peasant, who had succeeded in getting his 
meal, came up and administered a resounding slap to the 
seneschal 's cheek. There was great excitement ; the lord ques- 
tioned the assailant. " My lord," said he, '' listen to me. 
Just now, when I entered the house, your steward met me. 
He gave me a hard buffet and spitefully told me to seat my- 
self at the buffet, adding that he would give it to me. Now 
that I have eaten and drunk, Sire Count, what would you 
have me do if not return him his buffet? And here I am 
ready to give him still another if he is not content with the 
first." The lord laughed and bestowed the prize on him. 

Another villein, to whom Saint Peter refused to open Para- 
dise, under the pretext that it was not made for men of his 
sort, shows that he had a glib tongue. He earnestly apostro- 
phized the apostle, reproached him with being harder than 
stone and with having thrice denied his Master. Saint Paul, 
who was sent to bring the intruder to reason, was no better 
received: the peasant called him a horrible tyrant and re- 
minded him that he had stoned Saint Stephen. Finally, God 
the Father Himself intervened, and the rustic, without be- 
ing disturbed, pleaded his cause: " As long as my body lived 
in the world it led a clean and pure life. I gave of my bread 
to the poor; I warmed them at my fire ; I let them want neither 



400 SOCIAL FRANCE 

trousers nor shirts. I confessed according to the rule and 
received your body properly. To him who died under these 
conditions, they told us from the pulpit, God pardons his 
sins. You will not lie to me." " Villein," said God, " I 
submit; your pleading has gained you Paradise. You have 
been to a good school ; you know how to talk well. ' ' 

Here the peasant has a fine role. He is also the hero of 
another story, entitled Constant du Hamel, where he set his 
head at once against all the authorities of the village and 
triumphed over those who wished to scoff at him. Our story- 
tellers have presented no facts more vividly than the two- 
and three-fold tyranny from which the population of the 
country everywhere suffered. A villager, Constant du Hamel, 
had a wife, as beautiful as wise, who was desired by the 
three petty tyrants of the locality — ^the cure, the provost, and 
the forester. One day the three suitors met at a tavern and, 
while drinking, plotted the downfall of the woman who re- 
sisted them; they combined to destroy her husband. This 
ingenious plan was the invention of the cure. He commenced 
the persecution by accusing Constant, in a sermon before 
the whole congregation, of having married his " commere, " 
who had been his godmother. He excommunicated him, drove 
him from the church, and only removed the anathema upon 
the payment of a sum of seven livres.^ 

The provost, in his turn, made the unfortunate villager 
appear before his tribunal, and there a scene was enacted 
which must often have occurred in actual fact. He com- 
menced by putting him in chains, and threatened him with 
something still worse. " You shall be put on the gallows." 
Then he said to Clugnart, his servant, " Go quickly and say 
to my seignior that I have my hands on the traitor who stole 
his wheat." — " Ah! sire provost," cried Constant, " may 
God help me : I am not guilty. ' ' The provost replied : ' ' That 
is the stuffing with which you wish to fill me ; the tracks of 

1 More than eight hundred francs in our money. One might remark 
by way of historical comment, that an article of the council of Rouen 
of 1189 accused the cur6s of scandalously abusing the right which they 
had of excluding jiarishioners who displeased them, or from whom they 
wished to make some profit, from the church and the sacraments. The 
methods employed by the cur6 of the fable were, then, in accordance 
with well established tradition. 



PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 401 

the grain-thief were traced to your garden." " Seignior," 
said the villager, " it is my enemies who have charged this 
crime to me; but, while the truth is being discovered, take 
my property in order that I may have peace." " And what 
will you give to my seignior if I set you free? " " Sire, I 
will give twenty livres."^ " Very well; you may return to 
your home," In the stories all the provosts are alike: they 
taxed their subordinates with the same impudence. They 
are represented as snobbish, avaricious, greedy, harsh towards 
poor people : one of them, invited to the table of his seignior, 
secretly made provision for his luncheon on the following 
day; another replied to a poor woman from whom he had 
taken two cows: " By my faith, old woman, I will return 
them to you when you have paid me your share of the many 
pence hidden in your pot." They were simply brigands. 

Finally came the forester, ' ' the one who guards the woods 
of the lord," " very handsome and of a fine carriage and well 
armed with bow and sword." The forester accused Constant 
du Hamel of having that night cut three oaks and a beech 
tree in the forest of the seignior. The innocent man was in- 
dignant, but the forester menaced him with his naked sword, 
seized his oxen, and Constant was obliged to pay a hundred 
sous for the pretended offense. Many historical texts of this 
period show that the forester was one of the most formidable 
of seigniorial agents and the most abhorred by the rural 
people, whom he oppressed with fines. In a letter addressed 
to one of his friends, Peter of Blois strongly censured him 
for permitting himself to be associated as clerk of the ac- 
counts, as secretary to the royal foresters, and for being 
proud of that position : ' ' You are, then, going to labor at 
putting into writing the tyrannical exactions of which the 
poor people are the victims. Know that you will cause the 
unfortunates, who shall be entered on the list of fines in the 
circuit of the foresters, to be inscribed on the book of the 
dead by our Lord." 

Provosts and foresters, all the agents, functionaries, or 
tenants of the seignior who oppressed the villagers, were per- 
haps the most direct cause of their suffering, their most in- 
tolerable scourge. The preacher, Jacques of Vitry, in his 
^ About twenty-four hundred francs in our money. 



402 SOCIAL FRANCE 

sermon ' ' to the nobles, ' ' compared them sometimes to leeches, 
whom the seignior in his turn pressed to make them disgorge ; 
sometimes to crows, which circle croaking around a cadaver 
which the master has plundered, to feed on the remains. 
And yet that was historical fact. 

We do not, for a good reason, relate how the wife of Con- 
stant du Hamel and her servant managed to bring the three 
persons who had wished to ruin her together in the home 
of the villager; how they all three found themselves, in a 
rather light costume, in a cask filled with feathers; and how 
the peasant, after being completely revenged on his enemies, 
let them out and set all the dogs in the village on them. What 
interests us here is not entirely the rare victory of a villein 
over his persecutors, but the details of the method of op- 
pression and the portrayal of seigniorial exactions. 

Let us look at another very much more detailed account, 
which very probably dates from the beginning of the thir- 
teenth century: a document entitled Le conte des vilains de 
Verson. To tell the truth, the tale, if it is not one of them, 
has some resemblance to the fabliaux, being like very many 
of them written in lines of eight syllables. It is a poem of 
two hundred and thirty-five lines, which was found in a 
register of quit-rents in the Archives of Calvados. It tells 
us of an insurrection in the village of Verson, which strove 
to free itself from the corvees and rents by which it was 
subjected to the abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel. The author, 
hostile to the popular cause, gives only obscure and insignifi- 
cant details of the revolt, but he gives an interminable list 
of obligations with which the villeins were burdened. There 
is no tirade on the sufferings of the rural population which 
speaks so eloquently as this simple enumeration. 

At Saint-Jean the vjlleins of Verson had to reap the 
meadows of the seignior and carry the hay to the manor. 
Then they had to clean the trenches. In the month of August 
there was the great corvee, the grain harvest, which had to 
be carried to the barn. Their own fields were subjected 
to field-rent: they had to summon the bailiff, who carried 
their sheaves away in his cart. In September came the swine- 
tax : if there were eight hogs, they carried the two finest to 
the lord, who did not choose the poorer, and for each of the 



PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 403 

seven others they paid a denier. At Saint-Denis they paid 
quit-rent; then the pourpreture — that is, the right of inclos- 
ing their fields. If they sold a piece of land, the seignior had 
a right to a thirteenth. At the beginning of winter came 
a new corvee : they had to prepare the seigniorial land, bring 
the seed from the barns, and each sow and harrow a piece 
of land. At Saint- Andre, three weeks before Christmas, they 
paid the oubUe, a kind of cake, ' ' for the private room. ' ' At 
Christmas they carried hens to their lord, and, if they did 
not bring ' ' good and fine ones, ' ' the provost would seize their 
deposit — for each peasant deposited with the provost a se- 
curity, which could be seized in case he attempted to evade 
his obligations. Then the villeins owed the hresage, a tax 
of two setiers of barley and of nine quarters of wheat. 

The enumeration continues mercilessly. If the villein of 
Verson married his daughter outside of the seigniory, he paid 
three sous; and the author of the list remarks that formerly 
the villein " took his daughter by the hand and gave her 
over to his lord." But here, as in most texts, the famous 
" right of the seignior " is mentioned only as belonging to 
the customs of a former time. On Palm Sunday they owed 
the sheep-tithe, and, if the peasants were not able to pay it 
on that very day, they were at the mercy of the seignior. 
At Easter they owed a new grain corvee: the seed had to be 
secured, sown, and harrowed. Then the peasants were 
obliged to go to the smithy to shoe their horses, for it was 
the time to go into the woods and cut trees; but in this 
instance they received pay, a ' ' rich wage, ' ' says the writer : 
two deniers a day. Finally, they owed the corvee of cartage, 
the sommage. 

The last page of the selection is devoted to reminding the 
peasants that they are subject to the hanalite of the mill and 
of the oven. The miller may take from them a bushel of 
grain and a palette of flour, plus a full handful, plus the 
right of valetage " for the service of portage." Finally, we 
see the wife of the villein carrying her bread and pies to the 
common oven. But the baker's wife, often in a bad humor, 
" is haughty and proud," and the baker himself, sullen. He 
says that he is not paid a proper amount; swears by the 
teeth of God that the furnace will be badly heated, that it 



404 SOCIAL PEANCE 

will not make good bread, and that the bread will be poorly- 
baked and " sour." 

It would seem that this enumeration of imposts, of eorvees, 
and the suffering which they brought, should have moved him 
who described them. On the contrary, he is bitter and 
hostile. " Go and make them pay," he says. '' They ought 
to pay well. Go, take their horses ; take both cows and calves, 
for the villeins are felons. ' ' And his last word is this, ' ' Sire, 
know that under heaven I do not know of a meaner people 
than the villeins of Verson." Feudalism was not content 
with oppressing the peasant: it boasted of its own excesses, 
and did not realize that its victims would attempt to throw off 
the yoke. 



The peasant, however, was everywhere obliged to resign 
himself to his r- miserable condition, like the beast which lives 
and dies where it is fastened. He often attempted to escape, 
to change his lot, and he went at it in three different ways: 
he fled from the seigniory and took refuge in a neighboring 
fief; he resisted the impost, rebelled, and by force won his 
partial or total emancipation; or, finally, he bought exemp- 
tions and privileges from his seignior, he peacefully obtained 
a charter of rights. Let us follow him in the three different 
ways and see what comes of him. 

First, the abandonment of the seigniory by flight, the 
exodus of individuals and even of whole populations in a 
body, was a more frequent fact in France of the middle 
ages than one is disposed to believe. It is supposed that the 
peasant of that time did not move, that he was riveted to 
the soil. But, on the contrary, a close study of the docu- 
ments reveals a very real and intense movement of rural 
people. They were much less settled then, far more nomadic, 
than they are to-day. Not only was there, beside the class 
of farmers fixed to the soil, a class of wandering pioneers, 
the " woodmen," who made a business of going from forest 
to forest; but it is certain that this class of woodmen was 
always reenforced by fugitive villeins escaping from serfdom. 
These desertions, these individual or collective emigrations, 
these movements from one seigniory to another, were such 



PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 405 

frequent facts that in the twelfth century certain local laws, 
especially in Burgundy and in Franche-Comte, went so far 
as to allow the peasant to leave the fief to which he belonged 
on two conditions : that he renounce all his movable and im- 
movable property — he was supposed to be destitute on leav- 
ing the seigniory ; and, second, that, by an act called the dis- 
avowal, he informed his lord of his intention of becoming 
the subject of another. But we must consider that this cus- 
tom was not general and that the legal sanction ac- 
corded to emigration was distasteful to the majority of feudal 
proprietors. 

In general, then, there was not any other way of escaping, 
except deserting the fief — that is, flight. But the condition 
of the fugitive serf, over whom the master and his agent could 
always exercise their right of pursuit and claim, was still 
unhappy enough. The lords, in fact, combined to prevent 
their serfs from escaping: they concluded agreements by 
which they gave each other the right of pursuing deserting 
peasants in one another's territories, and pledged themselves 
not to harbor a neighbor's serf. Thus it was that Philip 
Augustus signed an agreement with the seignior of Sully-sur- 
Loire in 1187, and with the countess of Champagne in 1205, 
by which the contracting parties swore not to keep each 
other's serfs, but to mutually surrender them. In 1220, the 
royal officers residing at Chartres and in the adjoining region 
received a circular from the king, running thus: 

" Philip, by the grace of God, King of France to all bailiffs and 
provosts to whom these presents shall come, greeting. We com- 
mand you by this decree to proceed to the arrest of the serfs of 
Abonville, Boisville, and of Germignonville who refuse to obey 
our dear and faithful abbot of Saint-Pere of Chartres. You may 
seize them wherever you find them outside of the cemetery, the 
church, or other sacred place. You shall keep them closely im- 
prisoned, and shall not give them their liberty until the abbot of 
Saint-Pere demands it of you." 

In spite of the leagues of proprietors, desertions and emi- 
grations constantly multiplied; it was so difficult to prevent 
the peasant from leaving the fief that the lords, instead of 
preventing the flight of the serf and imprisoning him, came 



406 SOCIAL FRANCE 

to accept his departure and even his settlement upon the 
land of another. But, among themselves, they signed conven- 
tions of parcours or entrecours (percursus or inter- 
cur sus) ; it was more liberal and certain: the contracting 
parties mutually granted the right of retaining each other's 
serfs. They were indemnified by the exchange. Treaties of 
" intercourse " were numerous in the epoch of Philip Augus- 
tus. Let it suffice here to mention the one concluded in 1204 
between the duke of Burgundy and the countess of Cham- 
pagne, and the one concluded between the countess of 
Champagne and the count of Nevers, Peter of Courtenay, in 
1205. But it was sometimes a dupes' agreement, especially 
when the king of France was one of the signers : as they were 
more peaceful and less exposed to brigandage on royal terri- 
tory — ^the serfs of lay and ecclesiastrcal lords flocked thither; 
a void was created in the fiefs bordering upon the Capetian 
domains, to the profit of the king. 

In reality, despite treaties and oaths, the lords did all 
they could to steal serfs, to attract and retain the peasants 
of others, and to prevent their own from going away. And 
King Philip Augustus distinguished himself more than any 
one in this dishonest game. What he did in this line in the 
royal domain, every baron did in his own: it was a game at 
getting the most and losing the least possible. When Philip, 
in 1205, signed a treaty of " intercourse " with the countess 
of Champagne, the latter complained that the serfs of Cham- 
pagne had left in great numbers and taken refuge in the 
king's free city, Dixmont (Yonne) : the king, however, de- 
clared that he should keep all the serfs who had gone there 
before the present contract. In 1212, when the bishop of 
Nevers also complained to him of seeing his land deserted 
by the serfs for those of the king, Philip did accept this 
clause: "If an episcopal serf settles in our domain, we will 
have him seized and, if after an investigation of his condition 
it is proved that he belonged to the bishopric, we will return 
him to the bishop. ' ' But he left the serf the right of buying 
himself off and thus to remain free on the royal land, and 
stipulated that the bishop should have only half of the ran- 
som money; the other half should go to the king. Thus, 
Philip Augustus not only benefited by the presence in his 



PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 407 

town of a man who did not belong to him, but he found the 
means of getting money, in addition to having another sub- 
ject. And this curious convention of 1212 contains still 
another clause most favorable to royalty. Many of the serfs 
of the bishop of Nevers had formerly sought refuge in the 
royal towns of Bourges and Aubigny-sur-Cher. The bishop 
had given up reclaiming them, but he maintained that they 
should at least be compelled to ransom themselves and that, 
by the terms of the treaty, he should receive one-half of the 
sum paid by them. Not in the least, replied Philip; the 
convention does not apply to them; they are covered by pre- 
scription. This was how the king of France understood 
business. 

Again it waB often the lords who favored the emigration 
of the country people, in order to enrich themselves at the 
expense of a neighbor. And it was not necessary for the 
peasant to go far to escape from his proprietor ; it was enough 
for him to go to a neighboring locality, into a city of the 
commune or into one of the new cities, one of those places 
of refuge where residence brought freedom immediately or 
at the expiration of a year and a day. 

It was possible, to be sure, to prevent individual deser- 
tions to a slight degree and to bring back the deserter; but, 
when the whole population of a canton wished to emigrate 
en masse, it was not easy to detain it. 'In 1199, the in- 
habitants of lie de Re, exasperated by the severity with which 
the lord of Mauleon exercised his hunting right, and troubled 
by deer in their crops and vineyards, prepared to emigrate 
in a body. To keep them, Ralph of Mauleon, in return for 
a payment of ten sous for each quarter of vineyard and 
setier of land, '' graciously " promised thereafter not to 
allow any other game in the island than hares and rabbits. 

When the lord remained inflexible his land was deserted: 
it meant the exodus of a whole village, or even of a whole 
canton. In 1204, the serfs of the bishopric of Laon moved 
in great numbers to the domain of a neighboring lord, 
Enguerran of Coucy. The refugees were well received. But 
the bishop protested. He proved before the royal justice 
that he had never signed a treaty of " intercourse " with the 
seignior of Coucy, and that consequently the latter had not 



408 SOCIAL FRANCE 

the right to retain his serfs. The peasants of Laon had to 
return to the episcopal domain. 

He did not always flee who wished to ; but, in spite of 
everything, desertions were numerous, continuous, so that 
many of the lords of the time came to realize that the only 
effective means of preventing them was to soften the severity 
of the exploitation of their subjects. 



When they were not of a mind to leave the country, and 
when the lord refused to yield, country-people resorted to a 
refusal of the impost and to open revolt. The documents of 
the time of Philip Augustus prove that the peasant showed 
himself ever more averse to the payment of feudal dues. The 
collection of tithes, especially, was accomplished with diffi- 
culty, because the church which collected them was not so 
well armed as the Tay seignior and had not the same ef- 
fective means of overcoming the taxpayers. The council of 
Rouen, in 1189, recalled the faithful to their duty: 

" Since many people refuse to pay the tithe, three notices will 
be given to warn them to pay fully the tithe collected on wheat, wine, 
fruits, animals, hay, flax, hemp, and cheese; in a word, on all the 
products which are annual. If the third summons is futile they 
will be excommunicated.'* 

' ' People must pay the tithes, ' ' said the council of Avignon 
(1209), and " should pay it before any other impost," added 
the council of the Lateran (1215). A letter of Pope Celestine 
III to the bishop of Beziers denounced the procedure of cer- 
tain peasants who, obliged to carry the products constituting 
the tithe to the dwelling of the cure, took it into their heads 
to subtract the cost of transportation. The pope ordered the 
bishop to excommunicate them if they persisted. In 1217, 
Honorius III allowed the canons of Maguelonne to censure 
those under their jurisdiction who did not pay the whole 
of their customary tithes or retained a portion of it under 
the pretense of covering the expenses of planting, of culti- 
vation, or of harvesting. 

These are significant facts. It is not without reason that 
the preacher thundered from the pulpit against the peasants 



PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 409 

who did not pay their tithes. Witness Jacques of Vitry in 
a sermon addressed to the peasants and laborers: 

"There are some among you who, at the peril of their souls, 
through avarice retain the tithe due to the church. But they are 
guilty not only of theft, but of sacrilege: the tithe is the property 
of God and His ministers; the duty to pay it is inscribed in the 
New Testament as in the Old; the tithe is the tax which you owe 
God, the sign of His universal dominion. Those who pay it are 
indeed the enemies of the devil and the friends of God; those who 
withhold it not only compromise their eternal salvation, but they 
are liable to lose all they have in this world: God sends them 
drouth and famine, though years of abundance are never lacking 
to those who pay." 

Feudal collectors, like those of the church, complained that 
receipts were diminishing, and in order to facilitate their 
task the bishop of Paris, Maurice of Sully, in one of his ser- 
mons, urged his diocesans to be more exact : 

" Good people, render unto your earthly lord what you owe him. 
It must be remembered and accepted that you owe your earthly 
lord the cense, the tallage, forfeit, services, cartage, and purveyance. 
Pay it all in full at the time and place required." 

But it was often in vain that the church urged the peas- 
ants to submit. When the lord refused all concessions, when 
he acted cruelly toward the poor payers, their exasperation 
often terminated in acts of vengeance and in riots. Jacques 
of Vitry attempted to put feudalism on its guard against 
the possible consequences of its violence and oppression. ' ' It 
is a dangerous thing, that despair," he said to them: " one 
sees the serfs kill their lords and set fire to their castles." 
Benedict of Sainte-More, the historian of the dukes of Nor- 
mandy, writing at the end of the twelfth century, thought as 
much of the present as of the past when he recalled the riot 
of the Norman peasants in the eleventh century, letting them 
utter this angry cry: 

"We have been weak and insane to have bent our necks for 
so long a time. For we are strong and hard men, more used to 
war and soldier, and stouter-limbed and larger than they are or 
ever were. For every one of them there are a hundred of us." 



410 SOCIAL FRANCE 

It was by the same reasoning, without doubt, that at the 
beginning of the thirteenth century the Norman peasants of 
the village of Verson, whose miserable condition we have 
clearly seen, attempted to revolt against their lord, the abbot 
of Mont-Saint-Michel. We do not know whether they suc- 
ceeded, but attempts of the same sort occurred everywhere. 

Between 1207 and 1221, the peasants in an archdeaconry 
of Orleans refused to pay the tithe on wool. The bishop of 
Orleans, Manasses of Seignelay, tried to compel them by 
means of excommunication. The furious peasants formed 
a plot against the bishop, arose one night as one man, — 
quasi vir unus, says the historian of the bishops of Auxerre, — 
and besieged him in the castle where he lay. They would 
have killed him, but he succeeded in escaping, and he forced 
them to atone for their rebellion. 

In 1216, the villagers of Nieuport, near Dunkerque, were 
in dispute with the canons of Sainte-Walburge of Fumes 
over the fish tithe. The deputies of the chapter appeared 
to receive it, and the peasants fell upon them, killing two 
priests and grievously wounding a cleric. Excommunicated 
by the church authorities, they finally regained the grace of 
the church, but at what price shall be seen: 

" The chief offenders, to the number of twenty-five, whether 
sheriffs of the village or simple residents, had within a year to 
make a pilgrimage beyond the seas, and could not return before 
a year had elapsed, and they had taken part in processions in 
twenty-six different churches at their own expense, without other 
clothing than their trousers^ going barefoot, and carrying the rods 
with which they were disciplined. One hundred other persons among 
the notables were also obliged to take part in these processions. 
The community of Nieuport had to build three chapels, give fifty 
livres to a convent of nuns, indemnify the parents of the dead 
priests who had belonged to the nobility, indemnify the wounded 
priests, construct a fortress costing one thousand livres for the 
count of Flanders in order to prevent new troubles; finally give 
the count of Flanders forty livres a year on the day commemorating 
the assassination." 

In certain regions of France these insurrections of vil- 
lagers ^bad a particular object. They attempted to imitate 
the inhabitants of larger towns and cities and organize them- 
selves into communes. That was why Pope Celestine III, 



PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 411 

in 1195, forbade the serfs of the church of Notre-Dame of 
Paris to form a ' ' commune " or conspire against the chapter. 

At the end of the reign of Philip Augustus the village 
of Maisnieres, situated near Gamaches and dependent on the 
abbey of Corbie, assumed a communal constitution without 
having asked the authorization of the abbot, who probably 
would have refused it.') The abbot, informed thereof, pro- 
ceeded to the new commune, which refused to receive him; 
the citizens even violently expelled him. The freed peasants 
annexed a neighboring hamlet to their commune, subjected it 
to the taille, then seized a priest who was found on their 
territory, and maltreated him. The abbot of Corbie sum- 
moned them before an arbitral tribunal composed of church- 
men, who decided against the villagers ; the dissolution of the 
commune was ordered and the rebels were sentenced to a 
fine of one hundred marks (1219). 

In the same year the inhabitants in Chablis, subjects of 
the chapter of Saint-Martin of Tours, also attempted to 
found a commune. They had organized under oath and 
had levied taxes. The canon of Tours caused the bailijffs 
of Philip Augustus and those of the count of Champagne to 
intervene promptly, and the commune of Chablis disappeared. 

Neither the insurrection of Verson, that of Maisnieres, 
nor that of Chablis is known to us through chronicles. 
Chance preserved knowledge of them to us in a few char- 
ters which escaped the destruction that befell thousands of 
others, and these in a few lines relate the futile efforts of 
the peasants. If it were not for this accident, history would 
know absolutely nothing of them. We cannot help believing 
that many other revolts of the same sort completely failed, 
and that those which to-day attest success belong to the 
exceptions. 

There was one, however, of which the chroniclers have 
spoken with some care; it was the insurrection of the serfs 
of the bishopric of Laon, composing seventeen villages, the 
center of which was Anizy-le-Chateau, and which embraced 
a territory twenty-four kilometers square. This insurrection 
lasted eighty years: it began during the reign of Louis VII 
and did not end until the middle of the reign of Saint Louis ; 
furthermore, these villagers struggled vigorously, and at 



412 SOCIAL FRANCE 

times successfully, against the combined forces of feudalism 
and of the church, and from time to time they had the kings 
of France as allies. It is from this circumstance that we 
should consider their attempt. Their history is the most 
instructive instance of the persistent and energetic efforts 
of the country people to gain their liberty. 

In 1174, Louis VII had given the serfs of Laon a com- 
munal charter, very like that which governed the burghers 
of Laon., Three years later the bishop of Laon, Roger of 
Rozoy, assisted by the seigniors of the region, took his re- 
venge : he surrounded the serfs in the neighborhood of Com- 
porte and executed a frightful butchery. When, in 1180, 
Philip Augustus became king the wretches had again fallen 
under the yoke of their bishop. In 1185, the oppression and 
exactions had advanced to such an intolerable point that 
they decided to carry their protests to the king. Philip 
Augustus, who had a grudge against the bishop of Laon, made 
himself mediator; he fixed the amount of taxes which the 
bishop was authorized to collect from his subjects, and the 
service assessments which the serfs owed the two officers of 
the bishop, the vidame and the provost. Further, he created 
twelve sheriffs taken from their midst, charged with allotting 
the taxes and settling differences which might arise between 
them and the bishop. No appeal, except to royal justice, was 
allowed from the decisions of these magistrates appointed 
by the king. 

The villagers of Laon demanded more : they desired to have 
a commune. Between 1185 and 1190, under circumstances 
of which we know practically nothing, Philip Augustus gave 
them this privilege. He revoked it in 1190, when he was 
leaving for the crusade, and desired to please the clergy. 
But the tenacity of the peasant who wished to free himself 
was at least equal to that of the clergy which intended to 
remain master. At the beginning of the thirteenth century 
the seventeen villages, still cruelly oppressed, made an at- 
tempt to emigrate en masse to the land of a neighboring 
seignior, Enguerran of Coucy. This did not succeed. Two 
years later, in 1206, the serfs of Laon took advantage of a 
disagreement between the bishop and the chapter of Laon. 
They succeeded in getting the canons on their side. The 



PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 413 

latter, becoming the advocates of the popular cause against 
the bishop, accused Roger of Rozoy in the courts of justice 
of mistreating his subjects and of crushing them with illegal 
taxes. The case was argued before the metropolitan chap- 
ter of Reims, acting as a court of arbitration. The judges 
gave a decision adverse to the bishop. They sided with the 
villagers and restored things to the status in which they had 
been in 1185. They revived the decree of Philip Augustus, 
fixing a maximum of taxes to be collected by the bishop and 
determined that, in case of a misunderstanding between the 
bishop and his peasants, the settlement of the difference 
should belong to the chapter of Laon. This was subjecting 
the bishop to the guardianship of his canons. Roger of 
Rozoy was so deeply humiliated by it that he fell ill and died 
shortly afterwards. 

But insurrectionary movements of rural peoples rarely had 
a successful issue, and on the whole the peasants suffered 
more than the seigniors. The residents of cities, protected 
by their numbers and by their walls, could gain freedom by 
force ; the villagers, who had no means of resistance, simply 
drew upon themselves judicial condemnation or massacres, 
without any gain to themselves. The great mass o:^ serfs, 
the free farmers and tenants, preferred to obtain the liberties 
which they desired by peaceful means, especially by purchase. 
The epoch of Philip Augustus witnessed an extraordinary 
increase of charters of liberties granted by the seigniors, not 
only to cities and burghers, but also to villages and ordinary 
hamlets — that is, to peasants. 

Undoubtedly, the motive of the seignior who gave the 
franchise, thus limiting his own power, was in a majority 
of cases personal gain: the peasants gave him a rent or a 
cash payment. It also happened that a seignior recognized 
the urgent necessity of repeopling his fief, which had become 
deserted in consequence of his own exactions, or that he feared 
his serfs might abandon his land and go to that of a neigh- 
bor, where free cities abounded. In that case he himself 
freed his villagers. It was rarely that he acted solely under 
the sway of humanitarian or religious principles, to make 
sure of his spiritual salvation, pro salute animae, pietatis 
intuitu. He was usually liberal out of personal motives. 



414 SOCIAL FEANCE 

In certain regions feudalism, desirous of avoiding a strug- 
gle with the peasantry, tolerated the federation of villages, 
such as that of the serfs of Laon, and permitted them to erect 
communes. Philip Augustus had favored the rural confed- 
eration of Cerny-en-Laonnais (1184), and the abbot of Saint- 
Jean of Laon, following his example, sanctioned that of Cran- 
delain (1196). At the end of the twelfth century the counts 
of Ponthieu permitted the erection, or voluntarily established 
those of Crecy, of Crotoy, and of Marquenterre. This curi- 
ous application of the principle of association had already 
been put into practice in the time of Louis the Fat, but it 
was the epoch of Philip Augustus which witnessed its full 
development. The residents of the village formed an asso- 
ciation; and many rustic communities, taking a similar oath, 
formed a permanent body, which had its mayor, its juris- 
diction, its militia, its treasury, and its seal. The members 
of these confederations varied in quality as well as in 
numbers. Certain rural communes consisted of villages, all 
unimportant; others were composed of a fairly well popu- 
lated city, or even of a country town with a certain number 
of hamlets under its headship. In one case, the association 
consisted of three or four members; in the other, it included 
about fifteen localities. The constitutions of these rural 
groups were modeled on those of the large urban communes 
of the neighborhood, whose protectors without doubt knew 
of their creation. 

Still, this kind of emancipation of rural peoples was ex- 
ceptional and prevailed only in a few provinces. The greater 
number of villages bought or obtained individual franchises 
from their seigniors, who, without entirely freeing them, soft- 
ened their domination by freeing them from the heaviest and 
most odious duties. 

At the end of the twelfth century and the beginning of 
the thirteenth the charter of Lorris reached the maximum of 
its dispersion. "While Louis VII and Philip Augustus liber- 
ally distributed it in the royal domain and as far as 
Nivernais and Auvergne, the lords of Courtenay and Sancerre 
spread it in their estates (Montargis, Mailly, Selle in Berry, 
Chapelle-Dam-Gilon, Marchenoir, etc.), and the counts of 
Champagne themselves introduced it into Chaumont-en- 



PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 415 

Bassigny and into Ervy. Its influence, especially toward the 
reduction of the scale of judicial fines, made itself felt in 
the majority of the contracts which were then being made in 
ever greater numbers between the seigniors and peasants. 

In 1182, the archbishop of Reims, William of Champagne, 
granted the little district of Beaumont in Argonne a charter, 
which served as the model for the majority of charters of 
enfranchisement granted to the rural districts of the coun- 
ties of Luxembourg, Chiny, Bar, Rethel, and of the duchy of 
Lorraine. In Champagne it was in competition with the 
charter of Soissons and the fundamental law of Verviers. It 
gave the villagers not only considerable liberties, but also 
practical autonomy — the privilege of freely electing repre- 
sentatives, sheriffs, mayors, and the free use of the forests 
and rivers. But the seigniors who adopted and spread the 
law of Beaumont did not prove themselves as generous as 
the founder: sometimes they reserved the right of naming 
the mayor, sometimes they sought to exercise that right in 
opposition to the inhabitants; everywhere, if the villagers 
had not agreed in choosing their magistrates on the day fixed 
for the election, the seignior named them. 

Other constitutions, less dispersed than those of Lorris and 
Beaumont, little by little transformed the civil and economic 
conditions of rural districts. " Rural sheriffdoms " were 
created in the domains of the countess of Champagne and 
of the churches of Reims. The village did not form a unity, 
but it was represented by a mayor. The sheriffs, who exer- 
cised all the local functions of the administration of justice 
(for example, at Attigny, the charter of which dates from 
1208), were not elected. The peasants remained in subjec- 
tion ; but in the matter of imposts and corvees they were guar- 
anteed against the caprice of their masters. 



If the chroniclers contemporary with Philip Augustus in- 
frequently speak of the peasants, and mention only a few 
of the revolts which shook society, they could not conceal 
the considerable role which citizens and cities began to play. 
The work of William of Armorica abounds in descriptions of 
cities. In Flanders it was Ghent, " proud of its houses or- 



416 SOCIAL FRANCE 

namented with towers, of its treasures, and of its large popu- 
lation ; Ypres, famous for its wool dyeing ; Arras, an ancient 
city filled with riches and eager for prosperity; Lille, which 
boasts of its excellent merchants and displays the cloth which 
she has dyed, and the fortune which is hers, in foreign lands. ' ' 
In Normandy it was Rouen, or it was Caen, the opulent city, 
" so full of churches, houses, and inhabitants that she found 
herself scarcely inferior to Paris " ; in the valley of the Loire 
it was Tours, " situated between two rivers, pleasant because 
of the waters which surround it, rich in fruit-trees and in 
grain, proud of its citizens, powerful through its clergy, and 
adorned by the presence of the most holy body of the illus- 
trious Saint Martin ; Angers, a rich city, around which lie 
fields of vineyards which furnish drink for Normans and 
Bretons; Nantes, enriched by the fish-filled Loire and 
carrying on a trade in salmon and' lamprey with distant 
countries. ' ' 

The monk of Marmoutier, who about 1209 wrote a brief 
account of the ecclesiastical history of Touraine, complacently 
depicted the city of Tours overflowing with riches. He went 
into ecstasies over the beautiful fur-trimmed clothing of the 
inhabitants, over their battlemented and turreted houses, over 
the sumptuousness of their tables, the luxury of their gold 
and silver dishes. Generous to saints and churches, charitable 
to the poor, they had all the virtues: modesty, loyalty, edu- 
cation, martial courage. As to the women of Tours, " they 
are all so beautiful and charming that the truth here passes 
all belief and the women of other countries are ugly in com- 
parison. The elegance and richness of their dress enhances 
their beauty, which is perilous for all who see them; but 
their firm virtue protects them, and these roses are as pure 
as the lilies." 

Rigord and the Armorican often mention Paris — its streets, 
bridges, churches, walks, and halls. They speak of its walls, 
of the tower of the Louvre, and its two chatelets. And one 
remembers the enthusiastic description of Paris written by 
Guy of Bazoches between 1175 and 1190: 

" I am in Paris, in that royal city where the abundance of 
natural gifts not only captivates those who dwell therein, but 
invites and attracts those who are afar. Just as the moon sur- 



PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 417 

passes the stars in brightness, so this city, the seat of royalty, raises 
its proud head above all others. It is situated in the midst of a 
delightful valley surrounded by a crown of hills which adorn it 
in emulation of Ceres and Bacchus. The Seine, that superb river 
which comes fi-om the east, here flows level with its banks and with 
its two branches forms an island which is the head, the heart, 
and the marrow of the entii-e city. Two suburbs extend to the 
right and left, the smaller of which would be the envy of many 
cities. Each of the faubourgs is joined with the island by a bridge : 
the Grand pont facing the north in the direction of the English 
Channel, and the Petit pont which looks toward the Loire. The 
former, large, rich, and bustling with trade is the scene of busy 
activity; innumerable boats filled with merchandise and riches sur- 
round it. The Petit pont belongs to the dialecticians, who walk 
there while debating. On the island, on the side of the king's palace, 
which dominates the whole city, there is seen the hall of philosophy, 
a citadel of light and immortality where study alone reigns supreme." 

Even in the chansons de geste, though feudal in character, 
the cities began to be the object of detailed and accurate 
descriptions. In Auhri le Bourgnignon the rich Flemish 
cities of Arras, Courtrai, and Lille appeared ; in Aiol, Poitiers 
and Orleans with their jeering inhabitants; in les Narion- 
nais, Narbonne with its port full of vessels, and Paris, ' ' that 
admirable city where stands many a church with its bell, 
and which is traversed by the Seine in two deep channels, 
which teem with vessels full of wine, salt, and great riches." 

The romances of the Round Table or the Arthurian Cycle, 
inspired by the spirit of courtesy, are not to the same degree 
as the chansons de geste the expression of military passion. 
As a typical work of this character one can mention the 
Qraal, of Christian of Troyes. The hero of this romance, 
Gauvain, came to a thickly populated city, which was very 
rich and very prosperous. The poet gives us a detailed de- 
scription of it; in a long passage he mentions most of the 
trades which flourish there. This practice of describing 
a city almost became a compulsory commonplace for his imi- 
tators, notably Ralph of Houdenc, who at the time of Philip 
Augustus wrote the Vengeance de Eaguidel. Not only does 
Christian of Troyes take considerable pains to describe the 
city and its artisans, but he seems to desire the citizens to 
take part in the plot. An enemy of Gauvain incited the com- 
mune against him; the citizens besieged him, and they were 



418 SOCIAL FRANCE 

led by the mayor and their sheriffs. Even municipal magis- 
trates came to play a role in feudal literature. And we meet 
the same thing in other poems. The lay Parise la duchesse, 
which comes from the beginning of the thirteenth century, 
portrays the citizens of an imaginary city called Vauvenice. 
They revolt against their seignior, Raymond, because he sub- 
stituted a bad woman for the real and lawful duchess, Parise. 
Under the leadership of their mayor they enter the city, find 
the false duchess, cut off her hair, cut off the bottom of her 
dress, and expel her thus disgraced from the city. 

The residents of the new cities, which feudalism and the 
church founded merely to people their seigniories, also be- 
gan to appear in the poems of the time of Philip Augustus. 
The lay Benaud de Montauhan, which has as its heroes the 
four sons of Aimon, contains in legendary form a true his- 
torical fact: the erection of the new city of Montauban, in 
1144, by Alphonse-Jourdain, count of Toulouse. By this 
creation he aimed to oppose to the consular republics of the 
south — the old cities which had escaped from his power — a 
new type of modern bourgeoisie, privileged but directly sub- 
ject to the seignior and exploited by his agents. This event 
caused a sensation in the bourgeois world of the middle of 
the twelfth century. The fancy of the minstrels enveloped 
it with romantic details. They fancied that the four sons 
of Aimon one day perceived a high hill at the confluence of 
the Garonne and the Dordogne : there, with the permission of 
King Yon, they erected a fortress, which received the name 
of Montalban; about its walls eight hundred families came 
to live, recognizing the four heroes as their lords, and pledg- 
ing themselves to pay an annual tax. And, according to the 
poet, these families divided themselves according to their 
trades : 

" One hundred of the citizens became tavern keepers, another 
hundred bakers, another hundred tradesmen, and another hundred 
fishermen; there were a hundred who carried on commerce, going 
even as far as India; finally, the three hundred who remained shared 
the balance of the work among themselves. Gardens and vineyards 
began to be put under good cultivation." 

This is imaginary, but interesting. 



PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 419 

Scenes from city-life, especially market scenes, began to 
be introduced into feudal epics. They are found in Aiol, 
and especially in Moniage Guillaume, which have depicted this 
life in a very lively manner. William, for example, goes to 
the market to buy a fish: 

" The mariners press around him. One takes him by the cope, 
others pull him, others push him. Each cries loudly in his own 
lang-uage. ' Here ! ' cry some ; ' Here ! ' cry others ; ' good fish, at 
your own figure ! ' ' Seigniors,' says William, ' for God's sake don't 
jostle me so, you will hurt me.' " 

The poem Hervis de Metz belongs to the terrible Lorrains 
group. It is the story of a noble of Metz who sent his son 
to make a fortune at the Champagne fairs. But the young 
knight understood fancying horses, dogs, and falcons better 
than dealing in furs, cloths, or precious metals ; he contented 
himself with spending the money which his father had given 
him in merry company. The bard seizes this occasion to 
give a lively description of the activity in the markets of 
Troyes, of Provins, and of Laigny. It is a singular mixture 
of heroic episodes and scenes from urban life. 

It is evident, then, that even feudal circles began to notice 
what people did in cities. The minstrel spoke of the shop- 
keepers and the merchants in other roles than as victims of 
the pillage and the cruelties of nobles. Cities and citizens 
became subjects of description. 

It is unfortunate that, in forming an idea of what the mate- 
rial conditions of cities at the time of Philip Augustus were, 
we have no other documents than the narratives of historians, 
letters, and the works of fiction. What authentic monument? 
do as a matter of fact remain? A few fragments of some 
wall, like those we see in Paris, and of churches : all the rest 
have disappeared. There are no longer any burghers' homes 
of that epoch. The greater number of them were wooden: 
it goes without saying that they have long since been de- 
stroyed. As to the stone houses, they were then very rare, 
and the only positive fact about them is that they date from 
the end of the twelfth or the first twenty years of the thir- 
teenth century. Certainly the oldest do not go back beyond 
the time of Saint Louis. There is not even a town hall, an 



420 SOCIAL FRANCE 

assembly hall of the citizens, a city hall, which can posi- 
tively be attributed to an earlier time, save perhaps the city 
hall of Saint-Antonin, in Tarn-et-Garonne. 



At the same time that the historical and literary documents 
of the reign of Philip Augustus for the first time in the 
middle ages give us adequate and specific details about cities, 
about their external appearance, and about the material con- 
ditions of urban life, they also (and this is likewise new) 
inform us of the social importance of the bourgeoisie who 
inhabited them. Previous to this epoch history scarcely spoke 
of the bourgeoisie, except as anonymous groups, which ob- 
tained charters of privilege or communal liberties from their 
seignior with his consent or by compulsion. From the end 
of the twelfth century they are described in a more specific 
and concrete form : in each important center the great burgher 
families began to be known by their names, their affiliations, 
and their pedigrees ; frequently they deal with the seigniorial 
power; they hold the city magistracies, possess lands, and 
even noble fiefs; they exercise high functions in the courts 
of feudal lords. This participation of the urban class in 
political life dates from the reign of Philip Augustus. 

Let us first imagine ourselves at the center of the Capetian 
dominions, in Paris. In 1190, an absolutely unprecedented 
thing occurred there. The king of France was about to leave 
on the crusade, and before this great journey he made a 
political will, in which he arranged for the regency and 
regulated the exercise of public powers. Personages of the 
blood-royal, officially charged with this regency, were desig- 
nated in it: they were the queen-mother, Adele of Cham- 
pagne, and William of Champagne, the uncle of Philip 
Augustus and archbishop of Reims. But it appears, from 
the very terms of the act of 1190, that the king had very- 
little confidence in these regents, for he designated a council 
of associates, one might even call them overseers, consisting 
of officials of the palace, monks, and six Paris burghers. The 
part played by the burghers was considerable : the guardian- 
ship of the treasure and even of the royal seal was confided 
to them during the king's absence; each of them was to have 



PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 421 

a key to the coffers located in the Temple. In case the king 
died during his pilgrimage, a certain sum was to be set aside 
for the use of the heir, Prince Louis, and the guarding of 
that sum was confided not only to the six burghers, but also 
' ' to all the people of Paris. ' ' Thus Philip Augustus gave 
the representatives of the Parisian bourgeoisie a high hand 
in the finances and general administration of the realm. 

We know the names of these burghers, the first in the his- 
tory of France, who took a part in government. The names 
were indeed plebeian : Thiboud the Rich, Othon of the Greve, 
Ebrouin the Money-changer, Robert of Chartres, Baldwin 
Bruneau, Nicolas Boisseau. During the eighteen months 
that Philip Augustus remained in the Orient, a certain num- 
ber of royal diplomas were despatched in the name of the 
council of regency ; they were sealed with a special seal, hav- 
ing forms of this kind : " In the presence of our bourgeois ' ' ; 
" under the witness of our bourgeois." And these bourgeois 
were then designated: there were, besides the six preceding, 
other notables, or members of their families — such as John, 
son of Ebrouin; Matthew the Small; Ebrouin, son of Raim- 
baud. It is, then, a fact that the wish of Philip Augustus 
in this matter was carried out and that the Parisian bour- 
geoisie actually took a part in the regency, a thing which had 
never before occurred. And, yet more remarkable, Philip 
Augustus desired that during his absence representatives of 
the bourgeoisie should be associated with the agents who ex- 
ercised his functions, not only in Paris, but in all villages 
of the dominion: for another clause in the testament of 1190 
decrees that in all cities the royal provost should carry on 
the affairs of his city, the seat of his jurisdiction, with the 
assistance of four burghers, of whom two at least should be 
chosen by him from the locality itself. 

However, the participation of the bourgeoisie in the cen- 
tral government and the local administration was only tem- 
porary; when Philip Augustus returned he took back his 
full and complete authority. But such a mark of confidence 
shown the inhabitants of the cities left a grateful memory 
with them, and not all traces of their experience at govern- 
ment disappeared: new relations and habits were created; 
the alliance established between royalty and the cities out- 



422 , SOCIAL FRANCE 

lived the particular circumstance which brought it to life. 
After 1190, the bourgeoisie still appeared among the asso- 
ciates of the sovereign, and one of the leaders of the Parisian 
bourgeoisie, Eude Arrode, held the position of pantler in 
his court. His name figures many times in royal diplomas: 
in 1211, Philip gave him two houses in Paris; and, 1217, he 
gave him several fishing-places in the Seine near the Grand 
and Petit pont. He was evidently a man in the king's confi- 
dence. In 1219, a member of his family, Nicolas Arrode, and 
another burgher, Philip Hamelin, enjoyed the provostship of 
Paris. 

The same condition was found in all seigniories. The 
counts of Champagne, at the end of the twelfth century, 
used the bourgeoisie of their fiefs as sergeants, provosts, and 
bailiffs, and admitted them to the council and to court — that 
is, to the administration of the central power., It is enough 
to mention Lambert Bouchut of Bar-sur-Aube. This Lam- 
bert Bouchut, from 1220 to 1225, occupied one of the high 
offices of the county of Champagne: he was treasurer of the 
county. He was already in the court of Champagne in 1195, 
employed in many capacities — such as judge, arbiter, expert, 
and agent on many diplomatic missions; and, in 1224, when 
the count of Champagne joined King Louis VIII on the ex- 
pedition to Saintogne, this burgher of Bar-sur-Aube appears 
to have exercised the functions of administrative chief in 
Champagne during the sovereign's absence, under the title of 
" bailiff of the court." 

If the aristocratic bourgeoisie began to hold a considerable 
place in the councils of the realm and of the high suzerains, 
it exercised a much greater power in its own society, in the 
cities. There it possessed municipal powers, and in the north 
as in the south we see magistracies handed down as an 
inheritance within single families. We begin to become ac- 
quainted with dynasties of burghers. 

At Rouen it was the family of Fergaut which, in 1177, 
occupied the mayoralty, the chief position of the commune. 
The mayor was already a great personage. In many char- 
ters of the Plantagenet kings his name figures with that of 
the chancellor and the royal judge, and with the names of his 
equals, the municipal counselors numbering one hundred: 



PEASANTS AND BURGHEES 423 

Nicolas Groignet, William Cavalier, Luce of Donjon, William 
Petit, Nicolas of Dieppe, etc. Several of the bourgeoisie of 
Rouen succeeded Fergaut as mayor in the first twenty years 
of the thirteenth century, and in the list of mayors other 
plebeian names appeared — such as John Fessart (1186), 
Matthew the Fat (1195-1200), Sylvester the Money-changer 
(1208-09), Nicolas Pigache (1219-1220). 

At La Rochelle the rich bourgeois families, Auffrei and 
Foucher, stood in the front rank. Alexander Auffrei, in 
1203, founded the celebrated almonry of La Rochelle, and 
Peter Foucher, in his will drawn up before 1215, like a great 
seignior bequeathed considerable property to the abbey of 
Fontevrault. He was a friend of Queen Eleanor of Aqui- 
taine; in 1209, she gave this Peter Foucher, her burgher 
whom she called '' dilectum et fidelem hominem nostrum," to 
the monks of Fontevrault : that is, she transferred the rev- 
enues which she drew from Foucher to the abbey. 

At Bordeaux the great families of Colomb, Calhau, Mone- 
deir, and Beguer contended for the high offices of the com- 
mune throughout the thirteenth century. Already, in 1220, 
Guilhem Aramon Colomb was mayor; the documents, indeed, 
tell of still earlier ones: Peter Audron in 1218 and Peter 
Lambert in 1208. This Peter Lambert is known to us through 
a single interesting charter. In 1208, the king of Castile, 
the enemy of John Lackland and an ally of Philip Augus- 
tus, besieged Bordeaux. The Bordelais, in order to defend 
themselves, had to destroy a few churches and hospitals be- 
longing to the priory of Saint-Jacques of Bordeaux. To 
indemnify the monks the mayor, Peter Lambert, granted 
them a charter, drawn up in his name and in that of the 
commune, by which he permitted them to build as many 
houses as they wished on a certain part of the moat, provided 
they did not entail, sell, or rent them to any one. The char- 
ter began thus: " Peter Lambert, mayor of Bordeaux; the 
jurors, and the whole commune of Bordeaux; to all those 
who shall see this present charter, greeting." 

At the same time the great shipowners of Bayonne, the 
Dardir, and those of Marseilles, the Manduel, whose name 
appeared in so many acts relating to commerce or public 
works of the region of Provence, were, because of their wealth, 



424 SOCIAL FRANCE 

men of power, who treated with high barons and prelates 
almost as equals. When these families of rich burghers 
were at the head of a free town, of a commune, or of a wholly 
independent consular city, their pride passed all bounds. In 
their collectivity they formed a veritable seigniory; they 
entered the feudal hierarchy and considered themselves upon 
the same level as the sovereign barons. And, in fact, having 
become masters of the municipal soil, they possessed all the 
prerogatives attached to sovereignty. They had legislative 
power, the right of proclamation or ordinance, judicial power, 
both civil and criminal, and the right of levying taxes upon 
the town. Like the lords, they possessed a shield, a watch- 
tower which was their donjon, ramparts which protected 
them, a gibbet, and a pillory in token of high justice. A 
republic like Avignon, in its treaty concluded with Saint- 
Giles in 1208, proudly declared that " it obeyed no one but 
God." It claimed complete autonomy, the right of peace 
and war, and it was not wise to provoke the wrath of its 
bourgeoisie ; having surprised their enemy. Baron William of 
Baux, in an ambuscade, the inhabitants of Avignon burned 
him alive and cut his body to pieces. 

For it was not only in the administrative and judicial or- 
ganisms and in political sovereignty that the bourgeoisie of 
this time came to take its place. It also began to appear as 
a military force, as an element in the royal and seigniorial 
armies. For the first time, historians tell us of bourgeois 
militia with some detail, and to a certain degree even praise 
it, which is indeed a novelty. William of Armorica relates 
how King Henry II of England, invading Vexin in 1188, 
tried to take the town of Mantes. To the great astonishment 
of the English, the bourgeoisie came out from their walls 
completely armed and advanced in good order against the 
enemy; so well that he, thinking it was a trap, retreated. 
And the historian makes Henry II say: 

"What is this French foolishness and whence comes this pre- 
sumption? The common people of Mantes, which numbers hardly 
five thousand souls,- dares to think of measuring itself against the 
innumerable army of my knights! These folk who ought rather 
to burrow into their caves and barricade themselves behind their 
gates, march upon our naked swords ! " 



PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 425 

The feudal world was so little accustomed to this boldness 
on the part of the villein that William of Armorica felt him- 
self obliged to devote a passage of fifteen verses to celebrate 
the exploits of the men of the commune of Mantes in lyric 
fashion : 



"0 Commune, who can worthily praise thee? What a triumph 
for thee to have forced the King of England to retire even a pace, 
not daring to look thee in the face! If my poetic genius were 
equal to the subject, thy valor should become known through- 
out the entire world. For however little credit my verses may 
obtain, thy name shall always be in the mouths of our descendants 
and thy glory shall be sung by remotest posterity." 

The same historian shows that the communes served not 
only as fortresses, capable of arresting the march of an 
invading army, but also sent their militia afar and united 
with the knights of Philip Augustus: for example, at the 
battle of Bouvines. For a long time we have been in doubt 
about the meaning of this passage from William of Armorica, 
though it seems quite clear. One opinion, which it is very 
difficult to root out, is that the militia of Corbie, Amiens, 
Beauvais, Compiegne, and Arras aided in deciding the vic- 
tory, whereas in reality the men of the commune appeared 
in the battle only to be repulsed and overthrown by the Ger- 
man knights. The communal militia never rendered great 
service in the army, even to kings or lords who employed it. 
Chivalry, as we have said before, did not take account of this 
foot-soldiery and rode over it, to come to blows with the 
enemy the more quickly. It was the communes themselves, 
considered as places of safety and as a means of defense, 
which were truly useful to the sovereigns on whom they 
depended. 



The advancement of the villein into public functions, his 
entry into politics and affairs, and even into the military 
world, brought upon him imprecations and cries of anger 
from the feudal poets. They did not pardon him for coming 
out of his caste: all these parvenus could do nothing but 



426 SOCIAL FRANCE 

deceive ; bad luck to those employing them ! * ' Ah, God ! how 
badly has he rewarded the good warrior, ' ' one reads in Girart 
de Boussillon, " who out of the son of a villein made first a 
knight, then his seneschal and councilor, as did Count Girart 
of that Richier to whom he gave a wife and vast lands ; that 
fellow then sold Roussillon to Charles the Bold," Count 
Richard, hero of the lay Escoufle (a romance of adventure, 
written before 1204), received the confidences of the emperor, 
relative to the villeins. He avowed that he was no longer 
master of his empire and that he could not go fear-free from 
one town to another. He had made a mistake in trusting him- 
self to his serfs and in letting them rise in dignity ; now they 
possessed his chateaux, his cities, and his forests. Finally, he 
begged Richard to take the office of constable and to come to 
his aid. The count searched France for the bravest knights, 
and at the end of a year and a half he had rid the imperial 
lands of all the villeins who occupied chateaux. Moral: 
* * Never let a serf come to your court as your bailiff. For 
the nobleman is ashamed and abashed to have a villein for 
a master. How could it be possible for the villein to be either 
gentle or free? " 

Such was the opinion of feudalism with regard to the 
newly arisen bourgeoisie. This feeling was neatly expressed 
in another poem composed at the beginning of the thirteenth 
century, Roman de la Rose or Guillaume de Dole. The 
great personage of the poem was an emperor of Germany 
named Conrad. Now this emperor was greatly loved by 
all his nobility, " because he was not one of those kings or 
barons who were these days giving their servants (that is, 
to their villeins) rents and provostships, " at the risk of see- 
ing their lands " destroyed," all the world " depreciated," 
and themselves shamed. This Emperor Conrad, this wise 
man, chose his bailiffs from among the vavasors : that is, from 
the nobles of inferior class, who fear God and despise shame. 
As to the villeins and bourgeoisie, instead of placing them 
in office, he let them amass wealth, well knowing that their 
money would be his and that when he wished he could levy 
upon their treasure. And this was an excellent system. 
There was never a fair where the merchants did not buy a 
horse for the emperor. Their presents were worth more than 



PEASANTS AND BURGHERS 427 

a tax. So perfect was the policing of his realm *' that mer- 
chants could travel with as much security as monks." 

This is the society of which the feudal poets dreamed: the 
nobles remaining in possession of all the offices, and the 
bourgeoisie confined in their towns, where they were permit- 
ted to make a fortune for their lord's profit. Otherwise, 
what do those two curious pages, chosen from many others 
of the same nature, prove? In the epoch of which they deal, 
the rise of the bourgeoisie, the utilization of burghers in all 
social functions began to seriously disquiet the nobles and 
soldiers, who were obliged to bow before these villeins when 
they were invested with public power. But the lords had a 
difficult problem; they opposed the rising tide in vain. They 
were outflanked, and the minstrels, willy-nilly, introduced 
into their lays the bourgeois element, which they so detested 
and despised. 

Let one, for example, read that part of the lay of the 
Lorrains which has Anseis, the son of Gerbert, as its hero. 
The author of the selection pictures a certain Count Hernaut, 
who, finding himself at the point of death and wishing to 
avenge himself upon his sons for betraying him, caused the 
mayor of Bordeaux to come before him. 

" He caused Oudin, the mayor, to come before him and the 
judges of the village to be assembled. * Oudin, dear Sire,' he said 
to him, ' you have jurisdiction over all the crimes of Bordeaux upon 
the sea. You are charged with punishing malefactors. Those who 
do evil must be killed. But for love's sake I pray you to cause 
me ' to be avenged upon my sons.' Oudin replied : * Leave us in 
peace. Sire. From you we have nothing to fear, and you cannot 
command any one.' " 

And he explained this proud reply by reminding the count 
that he was the king's man and not his. The tone which 
this burgher mayor of Bordeaux employed in speaking to 
a great lord is significant; and it is noteworthy that the^ 
author of the poem, who probably wrote in the first half of 
the thirteenth century, states that the commune of Bordeaux 
was dependent upon royal and not upon seigniorial authority. 

In these feudal lays even the bourgeois militia appeared 
and held a certain place. It is true that it was often intro- 



428 SOCIAL FRANCE 

duced to be scoffed at; it was represented as consisting of 
poltroons. At the beginning of the chanson, Girart de 
Boussillon, the poet introduces the bourgeoisie of Roussillon 
charged by Count Girart with protecting the ramparts of 
the town which King Charles was besieging. When night 
arrived, each of the members of this civil guard found it 
pleasanter to go to bed and abandon his post. And imme- 
diately a traitor profited by this baseness of the villeins to 
deliver the place to the besiegers. At the end of the poem 
the citizens are presented in a more favorable light: They 
merit much praise for their devotion to their lord ; they weep 
with joy on learning that Girart has returned from exile, 
and they valiantly join in the struggle which he is obliged 
to undertake to reconquer his heritage. 

In spite of himself, the feudal bard has been induced to 
present to us a type of villein not altogether repugnant 
or ridiculous. There were some of these villeins who became 
knights, like Rigaud of Garin, one of the heroes of that epic, 
who fought like a lion and could cope even with the king 
of France, Yet, as has been seen, in certain respects Rigaud 
remains grotesque. In the case of others — for instance, 
Simon in Berthe aux grands pieds or David in Enfances 
Charlemagne — the comic disappears. Finally, it occurred to 
poets to give a good role to folk of the lowest rank. The 
lay Daurel et Beton glorified a simple player, and in that 
of Amis et Amiles two serfs gave proof of admirable devo- 
tion to their master. 

The bourgeoisie advanced, and daily made a larger place 
for itself in society. 



INDEX 



Abbot, 243; mitred, 150 

Abelard, 34, 64 

Abraham, 30 

Absalon, abbot of Saint- Victor, 
76, 191 

Absenteeism, 50, 108, 185 

Absolution, 59, 294 

Absolutism, 176 

Abstinence. See Morals 

Accession fee, 288 

Acrostics, 200 

Actors. See Players 

Adam of Perseigne, 174, 191 

Ad&le of Champagne, 30 

Admiral, 160 

Adultery, 174, 199. See also 
Morals 

Adventurers, 187 

Advowson, 41, 44. See also Pat- 
ronage 

Age qualifications, 92 

Agricultural enterprise, 130 

Aiol, 387 

Alain of Lille, 76, 185, 191 

Albert of Stade, 27 

Albigenses, 10, 19, 50, 75, 154, 
155, 160, 195, 199, 215, 271, 296, 
305, 329, 349 

Alda, 77 

Alexander III, 65, 152, 165, 167, 
311 

Allegory, 74, 190, 191, 197, 230 

Almonry, 227, 233 

Alms, 214, 217, 234, 338. See 
Charity, Mendicancy, and Pov- 
erty 

Aloul, 398 

Altars, 116 

Ambassadors, 159, 160, 181, 182, 
183, 278, 281. See also Mes- 
sengers 

Amice, 105 

Amos, the prophet, 30 

Anarchism, 16 

Anathema, sentence of, 8 

Anchin, chronicler of, 8, 22, 178 

Angers, 67 

Anna, 218 

Antichrist, 1, 199 



Appeals to Rome, 46, 48, 96, 122, 
149, 151 

Apsis, of churches, 116 

Arbalisters, 258 

Arbitration, 49, 73, 90, 216, 241, 
264, 299 

Archbishop, 151 

Archdeacon, 41, 111, 149 

Archers, 258, 386 

Architect. See Builders 

Archives, 39 

Archpresbyter, 39 

Arithmetic, 196 

Armies, 184, 270, 386, 424 

Armor, 253 

Arnaud-Amauri, 153, 154 

Arnoul II, 365 

Arras, 417 

Arson. See Fires 

Art, 224 

Arthur of Brittany, 181 

Arthur, King, 321, 376. See 
Round Table 

Ascension, 107 

Asceticism, 170, 223, 243 

Assassination, 157, 240, 296, 304 

Association of peace, 13; of peas- 
ants, 414; of priests, 40 

Astrology, 21, 193 

Astronomy, 196 

Athens, 74 

Aubri of Humbert, 154 

Aubri of Trois-Fontaines, 27 

Aucassin et Nicollete, 386 

Augustus, 192 

Autobiography, 189 

Auxerre, 160, 302 

Avarice, 51, 55, 57, 132, 173, 174, 
176, 187, 256, 313, 390, 395. See 
also Rapacity 

Averroes, 89 

Babylon, 1, 194 
Backgammon, 321 
Baggage-train, 261 
Baldwin of Flanders, 74 
Baldwin IX of Flanders, 377 
Baldwin II of Guinea, 378 
Baldwin III, 265 



429 



430 



INDEX 



Baldwin V of Hainault, 334 

Ballads, 273, 278 

Banalite, 403 

Bandits. See Brigandage 

Banking, 276, 328. See also In- 
terest, Usury 

Bankruptcy, 131, 230, 232, 237 

Banners, 310 

Banquets, 93, 116, 313, 323. See 
Feasts, Meals 

Baptism, 301 

Bards. See Minstrels 

Barons, 270, 275. See also No- 
bles 

Baths, 353 

Baucent, 345 

Bayonne, 423 

Beadles, 124 

Bede, 61 

Beggars, 80, 233. See Mendi- 
cants, Poverty 

Begon, Duke, 4, 183, 258, 317, 343, 
354, 388 

"Behourd," 320 

Bells, 59, 225 

Benedicite, 112 

Benedictines, 105, 205, 212, 223, 
229 

Benediction of tlie marriage-bed, 
60 

Benefices, 64, 78, 104, 208 

Benefit of clergy. See Clerical 
privilege 

Bequests. See Endowments, Gifts 

Berenger II, 176 

Bernard of Coudray, 181 

Bernard Itier, 8, 195, 231, 234 

Bernard de Naisil, 5, 343, 354 

Bernard of Ventadour, 375 

Bertran de Born, 256, 266, 375 

Bertran of Lamanon, 253 

Betrothal, 362 

Beziers, 199 

Bible, 200, 210 

Biographies, 189 

Bishop, 142, 173, 176; fighting, 
160, 175, 301; life of, 154. See 
Episcopal 

Blanche of Castile, 159 

Blanche of Champagne, 267, 284 

Blanche of Navarre, 377 

Blanchefleur, 183, 354 

Blasphemy, 76 

Bleeding, 322 

Blindness, 180, 211 



Blood-relationship. See Consan- 
guinity 

Boar, 317 

Boileau, 106 

Bologna, 80, 93 

Booty. See Brigandage, Pillage 

Bordeaux, 423 

Boucher d' Abbeville, 56 

Bourgeoisie, 83, 156, 161, 173, 271, 
381, 384, 387, 420. See Com- 
munes 

Bouvines, 5, 74, 160, 182, 251, 263, 
296 

Brain, 196 

Bravery. See Courage 

Bread and water, 305 

Bredeene, 239 

Bribery, 173, 241, 245. See Sim- 
ony 

Bridges, 2. See also Grand pont. 
Petit pont 

Brigandage, 8, 9, 16, 18, 143, 170, 
174, 176, 177, 187, 218, 249, 253, 
268, 276, 277, 289, 296, 298, 305, 
313, 330, 382, 390. See also 
Ravage 

Brotherhood of peace, 13 

Brutality, 258, 269, 270, 272, 278. 
See also Cruelty, Massacres, 
Punishments 

Budgets. See Money 

Buffoons, 53. See Minstrels, Play- 
Builders, 160, 161, 163, 225 

Building associations, 167; condi- 
tions, 120; funds, 165 

Buoncompagno, 79, 93 

Burghers. See Bourgeoisie 

Burials, 51, 184, 185, 216; eccle- 
siastical, 302, 312. See Funer- 
als 

Business, 50 

Butchery. See Brutality 

Cadoe, 10, 299 

Csesar of Heisterbach, 166, 222, 

230, 233, 312 
Calatrava, 154 
Calendars, 107 
Caliph, 27 
Calixtus II, 119 
Camp-following, 15, 184 
Canons, 38, 104, 105, 120, 129, 176 
Canonical hours, 106 
Canticles, 190, 379 



INDEX 



431 



Cantor, 64, 123 

Capitalists, 276. See also Money 

Capital sins, 197 

Capitular elections, 121 

Cardinals, 151, 206 

Carthusians, 201. See Clairvaux 

Cartularies, 114, 219 

Carving, 169 

Cassock, 105 

Castles, 156, 249, 261, 265, 351 

Casuistry, 218 

Catechism, 196 

Cathedrals, 117, 118, 148, 224 

Aiixerre, 162 

Bayonne ( Sainte^Marie ) , 164 

Bourges ( Saint-Etienne ) , 164 

Chaions-s-M. (Notre-Dame), 163 

Chartres (Notre-Dame), 29,164 

Embrun, 164 

Evreux (Notre-Dame), 163 

Laon (Notre-Dame), 163 

Lisieux ( Saint- Pierre ) , 163 

Lyon, 164 

Mans ( Saint- Julien), 164 

Meaux, 163 

Noyon, 163 

Paris (Notre-Dame), 3, 9, 64, 
87, 99, 101, 112, 113, 119, 120, 
130, 161, 165 

Poitiers (Saint-Pierre), 164 

Puy (Notre-Dame), 29 

Quimper, 164 

Reims, 163 

Rouen (Notre-Dame), 163 

Roye, 163 

Soissons, 164 

Toulouse ( Saint-ifitienne ) , 164 

Troyes (Saint-Pierre), 163 

V#zelay (Notre-Dame), 29 
Cato, 81 
Celestine III, 11, 84, 86, 131, 139, 

186, 236 
Cemeteries, 5, 53, 216, 225 
Censures, 157, 176, 283, 284. See 

Excommunication, Interdict 
Centralization of the Church, 151. 

See Papacy 
Chablis, 130 
Chamberlain, 111, 123 
Champagne, 267, 284, 422; fairs, 

419 
Champeaux, 5 
Chance, 20 
Chancellor, 64, 65, 70, 72, 87, 89, 

99, 102, 124, 182 



Chanson de la croisade des Al- 

Ugeois, 20, 333 
Chansons de geste, 54, 171, 182, 

184, 258, 273, 278, 279, 317, 374 
Chansons des Lorrains, 4, 5, 258, 

310, 358 
Chanson de Roland, 385 
Chaplains, 107, 116, 136 
Chapter, 104, 105, 107, 117, 138, 

235 
Chapter-general, 224, 233, 234, 239 
Charity, 7, 79, 80, 94, 146, 198, 

203, 205, 233. See Alms, Beg- 
ging, Poverty 
Charles Martel, 172, 259, 278, 315, 

336 
Charms, 20 
Char spirituel, 191 
Charters, 412, 414 
Chase, 175, 315, 317, 324 
Chastity, 243. See Morals 
Chateau. See Castles 
Chess, 53, 321 

Chivalry, 273. See Knighthood 
Choir, 117 
Choir-boys, 64 
Choir-stalls, 168 
Christ, 174, 190 
Christmas, 111, 115, 197 
Chronique des ^veques d'Auxerre, 

304 
Churches, 37; abbatial churches, 

226; cathedral and collegiate 

churches, 104; church courts, 

38, 85; fortified churches, 40; 

church treasure, 131; church 

revenues, 47, 139 
Churchwardens, 124 
Circumcision, 113 
Cistercians, 190, 204, 213, 223, 

233. See also Citeaux 
Cite, 2, 29, 64, 73, 75, 79, 101, 119, 

144 
Citeaux, 132, 166, 213, 215, 219, 

239. See Cistercians 
Cities, 3, 5, 293, 416 
Citizens, 253, 271, 292, 422 
Clairvaux, 105, 200, 204, 215 
Classes, social, 275, 382 
Clement III, 193, 245 
Clergy, 48, 272, 275; auxiliary, 

116; in business, 50, 51, 176; 

erudite, 60; fighting, 133, 160; 

illiteracy of, 52; immorality of, 

48, 49, 173, 176, 177, 239; itin- 



432 



INDEX 



erant, 79; regular, 150, 180; 
revenues of, 111; secular, 150; 
wealth of, 55, 130, 146, 223, 225 

Clerical privilege, 48, 119 

Clerk. See Secretary 

Cliges, 376 

Cloisters, 116, 118, 181, 187 

Clothing, 339. See Costume, Vest- 
ment 

Cluny, 105, 172, 200, 223 

Coal, 215 

Collections, 57, 166, 167, 205 

Colleges, 80 

Comets, 22 

Common people, 276, 311 

Commune, 143, 156, 229, 385, 392, 
411. See Cities, Bourgeoisie 

Communal militia, 425 

Compline, 107 

Concubinage, 53, 55, 149, 175, 176, 
205. See Morals 

Confession, 97, 217 

Confiteor, 111 

Conrad of Porto, 70 

Consanguinity, 183, 291, 363. See 
Blood-relationship 

Constant du Eamel, 400 

Constantine, 207 

Constantinople, 281, 304 

Contemplation, 223 

Contracts, 328 

Corvee, 115, 253, 402 

Cosmetics, 210 

Cosmopolitanism, 67 

Costume, 50, 56, 94, 105, 125, 129, 
132, 352. See Vestment 

Councils, 80, 152, 185, 337 

Council of Avignon (1209), ,40, 
49; of the Lateran (1179), 65, 
66, 152, 311, 315; Lateran 
(1215), 65, 408; Lateran 
(1218), 154; Montpellier, 
(1214), 129, 175; Paris (1208), 
51; Paris (1212), 52, 129, 174; 
Paris (1243), 235; Rouen 
(1189), 47, 51; Sens (1216), 
236; Tours (1163), 186, 187. 
See also Synods 

Courage, 196, 202, 257, 259, 275, 
278, 386 

Courbaran, 16 

Courtesan, 168, 176 

Courtesy, 351, 374 

Courtier, 143 

Courtrai, 417 



Courts, 78; church courts, 85 

Coward, 278. See also Courage 

Credo, 89 

Credulity, 23, 31, 52, 193, 198. 
See Superstition 

Cripples, 222. See Mutilation 

Critical sense, 61 

Crops, 316 

Cross, 26, 29, 30, 52 

Cross-bowman, 258. See Arbalis- 
ter 

Crovra of Thorns, 29 

Cruelty, 5, 11, 12, 141, 176, 177, 
195, 228, 256, 258, 302. See 
Brutality, Punishment 

Crusades, 9. 26, 27, 29, 36, 154, 
184, 199, 215, 234, 246, 272, 311, 
326, 341; third crusade, 154; 
fourth, 24, 36, 155, 314; chil- 
dren's, 25 

Cupidity. See Avarice 

Cures, 38, 45 

Curing the sick, 6, 24, 29, 186, 193. 
See Medicine 

Currency, 6 

Curriculum, 67 

Cyclones, 1 

Dagon, 132 

Dance, 53, 175 

Deans, 39, 70, 121, 144 

Death, 278, 301 

De continentia clericorum, 134. 
See Morals 

Debt, 131, 147, 205, 230, 231, 237, 
325, 337 

Delisle, Leopold, 81 

Demons, 312. See also Satan 

Denifle, 69, 70 

Denis the Areopagite, 34 

Denmark, 181 

Deposition, 121 

Depredation. See Ravage 

Devil, 23. See Satan 

Dialectic, 67, 75 

Dice, 53, 58, 174, 321 

Diplomacy, 160, 181 

Discipline, 149 

Dispensations, 110, 292 

Distributions, 94, 111, 114, 139 

Diversion, 322. See Games 

Divination, 20 

Divine intervention, 28; divine 
protection, 23; divine visita- 
tions, 1, 6, 12, 19. See Miracles 



INDEX 



433 



Divorces, 352, 363, 365, 370 
Doctors, 50, 184, 208, 322. See 

Medicine 
Dogmas, 75, 89 
Dogs, 80, 315, 318 
Dominicans, 71, 98, 212, 268 
Doon de Mayence, 333 
Dowry, 220 
Dragons, 22, 392 
Drawbridges, 175 
Dress. See Costume 
Dreux, Count, 359 
Drinking, 53, 82, 233, 274, See 

Morals 
Drought, 3 
Duels, 20 
Durand Dujardin, 12, 13, 205 

Earth, shape of, 77 

Earthquakes, 1 

Easter, 112, 115 

Eating. See Meals 

Eclipses, 22 

Economic conditions, 6 

Ecstasy, 24, 27 

Educated classes, 77, 143, 178, 180, 
374 

Education, 63, 78, 143, 180, 277, 
374; expense of, 81, 95 

Egypt, 74 

Eleanor of Aquitaine, 356, 377 

Elections, 121, 130, 136, 240 

Eloquence, 24. See Sermons 

Emancipation, 112, 404 

Embassy. See Ambassador 

Emigration of peasants, 405 

Endowments, 42, 43, 44, 127, 147, 
212; for the repose of souls, 113 

Enguerran of Coucy, 293 

Enigmas, 200 

Ennui, 210 

Envoys. See Ambassador 

Envy, 312 

Epic. See Literature 

Epidemics, 5, 6 

Episcopal budgets, 146; incomes, 
144; insignia, 150; jurisdiction, 
142; residences, 145; visits, 39, 
47, 148, 175; wealth, 144 

Equality of men, 389 

Erec, 376, 387 

Erudition, 77, 178, 241. See Edu- 
cated classes 

Escoufle, 386 

Ethics, 196, 218 



Etymology, 192 

Eudes Rigaud, 54 

Eudes of Sully, 20, 47, 48, 96, 113, 
124, 165 

Eudes of Vaud^mont, 295 

Eudoxia (daughter of Greek Em- 
peror), 367 

Eusebius, 61 

Eustache of Saint-Germer-de-Flai, 
24 

Exactions, 17, 40, 288; of Rome, 
198, 206 

Exaggeration, 199, 260 

Examinations, 93, 124 

Excommunications, 9, 11, 37, 59, 
87, 88, 96, 139, 175, 177, 239, 
252, 273, 283, 284, 285, 290, 293, 
294, 295, 296, 300, 328, 410; 
personal, 283 

Exhiimation, 88 

Exorcisms, 23, 58 

Expenses, 334; of war, 339 

Extortion. See Exactions 

Extreme Unction, 301 

Fabliaux, 54, 79, 173, 402 

Faculties, 69, 70 

Fair, 180, 419. See Markets 

Falcons, 50, 315 

False testimony, 183. See Per- 
jury 

Famine, 6, 7 

Fashions, 50 

Fasting, 21, 24, 203 

Fealty, 126 

Feasts, 45, 94, 107, 111, 322, 334 

Ferocity. See Brutality 

Festivals. See Feasts 

Feudalism, 126, 149, 253, 258, 262; 
feudal finance, 325 

Finances. See Money 

Fines, 110 

Fires, 3, 4, 5, 163, 167, 260, 261, 
384 

Fish, 214, 317; fish-days, 215, 234 

Flaying, 272 

Floods, 2 

Fool's holiday, 175 

Foot-soldiers. See Infantry 

Foragers, 261 

Forced loans, 339 

Foreign aflfairs, 182 

Foresters, 401 

Forgery, 242 

Fortresses, 147, 175 



434 



INDEX 



Franchises, 385. See Charters 

Francis of Assisi, 389 

Franciscans, 212 

Fraud, 13 

Frederick Barbarossa, 28, 200, 309, 

335, 342 
Freedom of teaching, 65 
Freehold, 221 
Free towns, 143 
Fromondin, 307, 309 
Fromont, 5, 270, 307, 343, 358 
Fulc, 321; de Breaute, 10; of 

Neuilly, 24 
Funerals, 71, 87, 94, 184. See 

Burials 
Furniture, 120 

Galopin of Tranchebise, 388 
Games, 129, 321; of chance, 175, 

352 
Gardens, 214 
Garin le Lorrain, 171, 172, 182, 

183, 184, 258, 270, 278, 307, 309, 

317, 333, 343, 354, 358, 375, 385 
Gaston of Beam, 297 
Genealogy, 193, 352 
Geoffrey of Troyes, 53, 76, 173; 

of Vigeois, 14, 19, 22, 23, 227, 

228, 330 
Geometry, 196 

Gerbert (son of Garin), 347 
Gervase of Canterbury, 13 
Ghosts, 23. See Superstition 
Gifts, 127, 146, 167, 212, 215, 217, 

218, 223, 339. See Bequests, 

Endowments 
Gilbert of Mons, 306, 309, 335, 

337, 342 
Girart de Roussillon, 171, 258, 

260, 278, 281, 315, 336, 353, 354, 

386 
Girart de Viane, 386 
Giraud of Borneil, 253 
Gluttony, 55, 313. See Meals 
Godfrey, 379 
Goliards, 79, 80 
Gomerfontaine, 213 
Good deeds, 217 
Good Friday, 114 
Gothic architecture, 39, 160, 226 
Gowns, 352. See also Costumes 
Graduating banquets, 93 
Graft, 90 
Grammar, 191 



Grandmont, 179, 181, 204, 228, 

243 
Grand pont, 73 
Greeks, 196; Greek church, 75; 

Greek Empire, 155 
Gregory VII, 247, 314; VIII, 193 
Gualo, Cardinal, 86, 198, 206 
Guillaume de Dole, 317, 355, 376 
Gui of Dampierre, 286, 299 
Guillaume le Marechal. See Wil- 
liam Marshal 
Guy of Basoches, 73, 416 
Guy of Lusignan, 369 
Guyot of Provins, 200, 201, 207, 
210, 234, 244 

Habeas corpus, 101 

Hardre, 270 

Haskins, 82 

Hate, 312 

Haureau, 276 

Healing. See Curing the sick 

Helene et Ganymede, 397 

Hell, 221, 312 

Henry II, 73, 265, 273, 310, 316, 
332, 364 

Henry the Young, 228, 265, 330 

Heresy, 16, 17, 52, 75, 87, 88, 199, 
271, 278, 293, 300, 301, 303 

Hermitages, 212 

Hernais of Orleans, 270 

Herring, 215 

Hervis de Metz, 182, 185, 278, 280, 
281 

Highwaymen. See Brigandage 

History, 74, 189, 194, 198; nat- 
ural history, 196; universal, 62, 
197; writing of, 33, 35, 60, 61, 
171, 194 

Holidays, 396. See Feasts 

Holy Ghost, 88, 197 

Holy Innocents, 31 

Holy Land, 29, 311. See Cru- 
sades 

Holy Scriptures, 190 

Holy Sepulcher, 25, 26, 29, 30 

Homage, 264, 267, 279 

Homer, 61 

Honorius III, 51, 69, 75, 96, 99, 
102, 121, 187, 284, 300 

Horace, 192 

Horoscope, 197 

Hospitaler, 111, 182, 205 

Hospitality, 146 

Host, 2 



INDEX 



435 



Houses, 3 

Hugh of Noyers, 18, 147, 156, 175, 

301 
Humanities, 77 
Hunting and fishing rights, 138, 

407. See Chase 
Hurricane, 7 

Idleness, 276 

Ignorance. See Illiteracy 

Illiteracy, 53, 277, 278 

Illumination, 39 

Imagination, 22, 260, 270 

Immorality, 187, 243, 311. See 

Morals 
Immunity, 119 

Incendiaries, 4, 5, 261. See Fires 
Incomes, 45, 146 
Incontinence, 53. See Morals 
Independence, 14; of thought, 72 
Indevotion, 275 
Indulgences, 166, 167 
Industry, 384 
Infantry, 386 
Infidel, 199. See Heresy 
Ingeborg of Denmark, 8, 157, 182, 

194, 322, 356 
Inheritance, 267 
Ink, Ink-stands, 81 
Innocent III, 8, 10, 20, 26, 27, 31, 

34, 43, 65, 69, 74, 86, 87, 90, 96, 

119, 143, 153, 167, 176, 239,246, 

247, 276, 284, 287, 290, 292, 298, 

314, 322 
Innocent IV, 102 
Inns, 180, 188, 311 
Insanity, 57 
Installation, 112, 144 
Intemperance. See Drinking 
Interdict, 37, 140, 238, 283, 284, 

285, 290, 293, 294, 295, 300, 301 
Interest, 50, 130, 329, 338; rate 

of, 338. See Usury 
Intolerance, 72, 89 
Intoxication. See Drinking 
Investiture, 41, 212; 343; lay, 348; 

religious, 348 
Iron, 215 

Italian bankers, 326, 328 
Itier. See Bernard 
Itinerant judge, 149 

Jacobins, 98 

Jacques de Vitry, 254, 269, 275, 
283, 312, 382, 392, 393, 409 



Jean des Chandelles, 90 

Jerusalem, 1, 29, 194, 200 

Jews, 49, 119, 190, 195, 207, 224, 

230, 231, 232, 236, 288, 326, 328 
John the Baptist, 31 
John Lackland, 10, 158, 181, 303 
John of Salisbury, 67, 68, 95, 147, 

382, 390 
Journals of visitation, 54 
Journeys. See Travel 
Joust. See Tournaments 
Jubainville, 326 
Judges, 144, 149 
Judgments of God, 175 
Judicial duels, 175 

Kiss, 111, 190, 191; of peace, 49 
Knighthood, 125, 172, 176, 180, 
182, 261, 263, 264, 271, 273, 275, 
307, 308, 321, 322, 340, 342, 345, 
346, 347, 386 

La Charite, 239, 301 

Ladies, 253, 258, 350 

Lady love, 374 

Lambert of Ardres, 59, 264, 306, 
322, 340, 378 

Lancelot, 376 

Laon, chronicler of, 13, 14, 17, 18, 
24 

Largess, 333, 338, 340, 342. See 
Liberality 

La Rochelle, 423 

Latin, 77, 79, 273; Latin Empire, 
314; Latin Verse, 196, 199 

Lauds, 107 

Law, canon, 67, 78, 276; civil, 67, 
78, 102, 108, 208. See Super 
speculam; study of, 187 

Lawsuits, 216 

Lawyers, 50, 208 

Lay brothers, 204, 205, 244 

Lay spirit, 282 

Lays. See Chansons de geste 

Legacies, 113, 114. See Endow- 
ments, Inheritance 

Legal combat, 175 

Lent, 114 

Leprosy, 6 

Lettered nobility, 176 

Liberal arts, 67, 73, 76, 77 

Libraries, 124, 147, 379 

Licentia docendi, 63, 65, 72, 93 

Liege homage, 126 



436 



INDEX 



Lightning, 2, 4 

Literature, 54, 61, 171, 208, 278, 
374, 419; coarse, 77; comic, 397; 
profane, 77, 108, 192, 274; ver- 
nacular, 173, 273. See Latin 
verse 

Lodgings, 95 

Logic, 196 

Lombards, 326 

Lord's Prayer, 89, 197 

Louis VI, 297, 299 

Louis VII, 31, 68, 153, 167, 287, 
297, 299, 364 

Louis VIII, 29, 74, 226, 265, 
308 

Love, 374, 375; love-making, 353 

Lucius III, 46, 48, 119, 129 

Lust, 313. See Morals 

Lutetia, 193 

Luxury, 175, 224 

Lyric poetry, 374. See Literature 

Magi, 31 

Maguelonne, 70, 131, 141 

Mainz, 309, 335 

Majorities (in elections), 136 

Malo, 251 

Man (definition of), 196 

Manasses of Troyes, 124, 216 

Manners, 38; depravity of, 82 

Manual labor, 179 

Manuals, 76 

Manuscripts, 147 

March, of an army, 260 

Markets, 5, 6, 251, 292; market- 
place, 180. See Fairs 

Marriage, 60, 174, 175, 182, 1^3, 
217, 268, 291, 300, 307, 350, 357 

Marseilles, 27, 423 

Marvels. See Miracles, Credulity 

Martin, Henri, 37 

Mary. See Virgin 

Mary Magdalene, 23, 31 

Mass, 107, 116, 278 

Massacres, 15, 16, 18, 258,-270, 
272, 304, 384. See Brutality 

Master, Degree of, 63, 101 

Matins, 107, 112 

Matthew of Alsace, 364 

Mauclerc, 299 

Maundy Thursday, 112 

Maurice of Sully, 29, 48, 52, 53, 
113, 147, 149, 152, 161, 165, 168, 
177 



i^ors, 144 

Meals, 55, 82, 111, 112, 115, 186, 
225. See Banquets, Feasts 

Meat, 202, 316 

Medicine, 29, 66, 67, 70, 74, 78, 
186, 187, 208. See Curing the 
sick. Doctors 

Meditation, 191 

Melancholy, 312, 313 

Memorial services, 115 

Memory, 196 

Mendicants, 98, 205, 212 

Men of letters, 143. See Educated 
classes 

Mercenaries, 9, 228, 239, 329, 335, 
336 

Merchants, 9, 311, 419. See Cities 

Merveille, 226 

Messengers, 181, 278, 279. See 
also Ambassadors 

Military service, 38, 142, 158,185, 
273 

Mills, 214, 225, 269, 281, 290 

Minstrels, 79, 119, 200, 209, 273, 
280, 309, 335, 341, 375. See 
Chansons de geste, Players 

Miracles, 2, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 
29, 162, 179, 193, 197, 198, 231, 
232, 234 

Miracles de 'Notre-Dame, 386 

Mitred abbots, 150 

Monasteries, 142, 201, 220, 221 

Monastic garb, 220; life, 201, 212; 
revenues, 29; wealth, 179; 
rules, 187; spirit, 173; vows, 
219 

Money, 131, 136, 188, 229; influ- 
ence of, 110, 185, 206, 315; lend- 
ing of, 38, 130, 230 

Monks, 45, 150, 179, 187, 189, 213, 
223, 281 

Montauban, 418 

Montaudon, Monk of, 208 

Montpellier, 66, 67, 92, 184 

Mont Saint-Michel, 29, 226 

Morals, 42, 53, 74, 202, 243, 324, 
351, 352, 354, 386, 400; of cler- 
ics, 49, 54, 78, 79 

Mortification, 186, 201, 204, 221, 
243 

Mortmain, 254, 394 

Murder, 177, 240 

Musee de Cluny, 53 

Music, 112, 175, 196, 321 



INDEX 



437 



Mutilation, 11, 12, 256, 258, 259, 
260, 270, 384. See Brutality, 
Cruelty- 
Mutual assurance societies, 40 

Narbonne, 417 

'Nations, 69 

Natural children, 324 

Nave (of churches), 116 

Nervous contagions, 27 

Nobility, 125, 170, 249, 254; illit- 
erate, 172; lettered, 176, 177, 
374 

Nones, 107 

Notre-Dame. See Cathedrals 

Novice, 222 

Nuptials. See Marriage 

Oaths, 28, 172, 175, 184, 188, 240. 
264, 279, 280 

Octavian, Cardinal, 84, 96 

Offerings, 166, 226. See Collec- 
tions 

Offices, 106 

Ogier le Danois, 333 

Oil, 30 

Omens. See Portents 

Opportunism, 314 

Ordeals, 20 

Ordinaries, 106 

Ordination, 46, 129, 148 

Originality of the middle ages, 
170, 197 

Orleans, 67, 81, 140, 417 

Orthodoxy, 89 

Outlaws, 12. See Brigandage 

Ovens, 281, 305 

Ovid, 61, 77 

Pantheism, 87 

Papacy, 123, 142, 206, 234 

Paraclet, Abbey of, 216 

Paradise, 199, 210, 213 

Paralysis, 231 

Parchment, 81 

Paris, 2, 5, 64, 67, 73, 74, 94, 165, 

193, 416, 421 
Parishes, 37 
Parsifal. See Perceval 
Pasts, 114 

Pater Noster. See Lord's Prayer 
Patron saints. See Saints 
Patronage, 41, 42, 198, 294; of 

letters, 376, 377 
Paving, 5, 6, 192 



Pawning, 51, 173, 189, 228 
Peace, 184, 246, 257, 261, 273, 281, 

292; of God, 13; of Mary, 13 
Peacemaking, 184 
Peasants, 229, 253, 254, 260, 271, 

285, 313, 316, 381, 392, 398; as- 
sociations of, 414; emigration 

of, 405; stupidity of, 398 
Penances, 28, 277, 305 
Pentecost, 115 
Pepin, King, 183, 307, 343, 347, 

354, 358, 361 
Perceval, 376 
Perjury, 40, 183, 211, 280 
Peter of Blois, 67, 77, 82, 174, 

180, 273 
Peter Cantor, 166, 169 
Peter of Capua, 34, 122 
Peter Comestor, 186 
Peter of Courtenay, 156, 301 
Peter of Dreux, 299, 300 
Peter of Nemours, 49, 91, 95, 114, 

146 
Peter of Poitiers, 82 
Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, 11, 20, 

256, 349 
Petit pont, 2, 3, 64, 73, 75, 101 
Pevele, 318 
Philip Augustus, 22, 192, 265, et 

passim 
Philip of Dreux, 125, 156 
Philip of Grfeve, 95 
Philip of Harvengt, 73, 134, 180, 

184, 397 
Philosophy, 189, 196 
Physical strength, 259 
Physicians. See Doctors 
Physics, 196 
Physiology, 196 
Piety, 169 
Pilgrimages, 155, 196, 226, 233, 

268, 278, 305, 316, 322, 323, 341 
Pillage, 133, 143, 156, 229, 249, 

253, 256, 260, 262, 272, 274, 277, 

282, 288, 297, 304, 384. See 

Plimder 
Plagues, 5, 6 
Plato, 77 
Players, 53, 119, 175, 321, 375. 

See also Minstrels 
Plunder, 15, 176. 177, 251, 253, 

268, 313. See Pillage 
Pluralities, 123, 125, 129 
Poets, 189, 200; errant, 200 
Poisons, 240 



438 



INDEX 



Policing, 8, 10, 13, 37, 84, 86, 123, 

133, 139, 143, 144, 294 
Pope, 280, 290. See Papacy 
Popular movements, 14 
Portents, 19, 22, 24, 26, 180, 211. 

See Superstition 
Poverty, 7, 79, 94, 149, 218, 222, 

224, 225, 226, 233, 254, 330, 389. 

See Alms, Charity 
Povre clerc, 79 

Prayers, 19, 105, 179, 223, 229 
Preachers, 52, 98, 143, 173, 191, 

254, 312, 352, 393; companies 

of, 52; itinerant, 52; manuals, 

53. See Sermons 
Prebends, 78, 104, 108, 123, 125, 

128, 131, 176 
Premontre, 105, 205 
Prevostin of Cremona, 78, 82, 90, 

132 
Prices, 7 

Pride, 174, 197, 312 
Priests, 37; conduct of, 51; un- 
frocked, 12 
Prime, 107 
Prime ministers, 159 
Primogeniture, 266 
Prisoners of war, 10, 299 
Prisons, 48, 85, 90, 97, 101, 139, 

177, 269, 298, 308, 311, 316, 328, 

329, 338, 357, 384 
Privileges, 110, 272 
Processions, 1, 3, 28, 29, 53, 74, 

139, 305 
Procurations, 123, 288, 292 
Prodigality, 335, 336 
Prodigies. See Miracles 
Professional studies, 67 
Property, four kinds of, 218 
Prophecy, 21 
Proprietors, landed, 272 
Provins. See Guyot 
Provosts, 107, 121, 122, 137, 144, 

254 
Prudence, 196 

Public women, 83. See also Morals 
Punishments, 18, 85, 240, 304, 305, 

316, 410. See Brutality, Cruelty 
Puy-en-Velay, 12 

Quadrivium, 67, 74, 77, 78 
Quarrels of clerics, 33, 42, 121, 

133, 134, 140, 157, 171, 216, 229, 

239, 295 
Quintain, 320 



Ransom, 9, 10, 11, 228, 256, 258, 

261, 274, 282, 297, 304, 308, 311 
Rapacity, 234, 254, 255. See 

Avarice 
Ravage, 4, 11, 218, 227, 260, 261, 

264, 266, 288. See Brigandage 
Raymond VI of Toulouse, 19 
Reason, 77 
Rebellions, 47 
Rector, 86 ' 

Refectory, 203, 227 
Reforms, 127, 149, 229 
Regular clergy, 150, 180 
Relies, 3, 6, 9, 24, 28, 30, 32, 107, 

147, 155, 164, 166, 167, 184, 193, 

198, 227, -231, 264, 278, 330; 

anonymous, 30; exposition of, 

33, 35; verification of, 32, 33,36 
Religious authority, 282 
Religious services, 107 
Reliquary, 30, 299 
Remedies. See Curing the sick 
Remorse, 278 
Rents, 100; in kind, 285 
Residence, 50, 108, 109, 116, 123, 

128 
Respect for women, 354. See 

Women 
Resurrections, 23 
Retainers, 156, 331 
Revenues, 108, 146. See also 

Church revenues. Money 
Revolts, 149, 408, 410, 415 
Rhetoric, 67 
Richard the Lion-Hearted, 3, 10, 

22, 153, 158, 252, 258, 265, 266, 

308, 330 
Rigaut, 346, 385 
Rigord of Saint-Denis. 1, 4, 13, 23, 

29, 192, 194, 234, 294, 339 
Riots, 409 
Rituals, 106 
Roads, 6 

Robbers. See Brigandage 
Robert of Courgon, 69, 92, 94, 95, 

121, 247, 276 
Robert of Saint-Marien (Aux- 

erre), 16, 17, 21, 100, 176 
Roger of Hoveden, 25, 307 
Roman architecture, 161, 226 
Rome, summons to, 152; journeys 

to, 153. See Appeals 
Round Table, 376. See Arthur 
Rusticus, 29, 34 



INDEX 



439 



Sacraments, 51 

Sacrilege, 10, 11, 229, 275, 296 
Sacristans, 124 

Saints, 23, 24, 107, 210, 213; pa- 
tron saints, 213, 219, 231 
Saint Alpinien, 225 

Amand, 31 

Ancildus, 33, 227 

Andrew, 33 

Anthony, 205 

Augustine, 203 

Ausonne, 30 

Austremoine, 35, 298 

Austriclinian, 19 

Basil, 30 

Benedict, 235, 281 

Benignus, 31 

Bernard, 30, 114, 169, 179, 215, 
223, 312 

Csesar, 31 
■ Denis, 33, 172, 280 

Eustache, 30 

Eustelle, 30 

r6r6ol, 30 

Flavian, 30 

Front, 30 

Genesius, 30 
Sainte Genevidve, 3, 31 
Saint Germain, 30, 232 

Gervais, 115 

Gregory, 30 

Hilary, 30 

Jerome, 61, 218 

John, 20, 30, 39 

Lawrence, 30 

Leocadia, 33 

Leonard, 30 

Louis, 236 

Martial, 30 

Martin, 19, 30 

Maurice, 31 

Nicolas, 30 

Paul, 30, 31 

Peter, 30 

Potentin, 35 

Priscus, 30 

Protais, 115 

Radegonda, 31 

Satumin, 30 

Sebastian, 30 

Simeon, 29 

Sixtus, 30 

Stephen, 30, 31, 113 

Thomas, 30 



Saint Vedast, 30 
Vincent, 30 

Saint- Amand, 241 

Saint-Denis, 1, 29, 234, 294 

Saint-:fitienne-du-Mont, 117 

Saint- :fitienne-le-Vieux, 165 

Saint-Foi, 29 

Sainte-Genevifeve, 2, 11, 29, 31, 64, 
101, 122, 181, 191 

Saint-Germain-des-Pr€s, 64, 83 

Saint-Honore, 80 

Saint- Jean-d' Arc, 154 

Saint-Lazare, 29 

Saint-Martial, 1, 29, 33, 195, 225 

Saint-Martin, 29 

Saint-Pierre, 39 

Saint-Sernin, 29 

Saint- Thomas du Louvre, 81 

Saint-Victor, 64, 105, 186, 227, 
232, 236 

Saint- Yriex, 30 

Saladin, 1 

Saladin tithe, 173, 341 

Salerno, 184 

Sanctuaries, 8, 29, 30, 31, 223, 
228, 278 

Saracens, 154, 280, 315 

Satan, 23. See Demons 

Satirists, 173, 189, 199, 204, 209, 
253, 257, 274, 383 

Scholars, 63. See Students 

Scholasticism, 189, 192, 199 

Schools, 63, 186; advanced, 64; 
capitular, 64; elementary, 64; 
episcopal, 63; free, 65; monas- 
tic, 63, 64; parochial, 63; pri- 
vate, 64; of medicine, 66 

Science, 2, 77 

Sculpture, 224, 227 

Seals, 46, 71, 100, 124, 125, 242 

Seasons, 77 

Secretaries, 181, 182, 278, 311 

Sects, 17. See Heresies 

Secular clergy, 150 

Securitv, 329. See Policing, 
Travel 

Seminaries, 64, 75 

Seniority, 117 

Separations, 363 

Serf. See Peasants 

Sergeants, 144 

Sermons. 52, 78, 83, 175, 189, 190, 
275. See Preaching 

Services, religious, 107 



440 



INDEX 



Seven, 197; seven beatitudes, 

gifts, petitions,- virtues, 197; 

seven capital sins, 197, 312 
Sext, 107 
Shrines, 28, 225, 226, 232. See 

Sanctuaries 
Sickness, 29, 202, 222. See Cur- 
ing the sick 
Sign language, 241 
Silence, 185, 186, 187, 203, 204 
Simon de Montfort, 10, 11, 20, 

153, 256, 297, 329, 348 
Simony, 143, 175, 204, 218. See 

Bribery 
Sins, seven capital, 197 
Sirvente, 209, 257 
Sloth, 312 
Slovenliness, 53 
Social distinctions, 271 
Socialistic theory, 276 
Social reform, 16 
Social theory, 275, 382, 390 
Society, 176, 382; classes of, 382 
Sorcery, 20, 21 
Spiritual chariot, 191 
Spiritual V7orks and benefits, 71, 

221 
Stained-glass windows, 168, 223, 

224 
Stalls, choir, 117 
Starvation, 176. See Poverty 
Stations, 114 

Stephen of Bourbon, 81, 268 
Stephen of Tournai, 75, 76, 77, 83, 

152, 156, 158, 182, 191, 238, 241 
Stewards, 50 
Students, 29, 54, 63, 68, 84, 85, 

86; life of, 68, 79, 82, 186 . 
Studia generalia, 66 
Sufltragan bishops, 151 
Sumptuary laws, 50 
Sunday, 24, 107, 396 
Super speculam, 102, 187 
Superstition, 1, 4, 13, 19, 20, 21, 

25, 180, 197, 211, 278. See 

Credulity, Portents 
Symbolism, 190, 191, 197 
Synods, 149, 151, 175, 185; of 

Paris, 47; of Toul (1192), 295. 

See Councils 

Tapestries, 147 
Taverns, 14, 53, 79, 388 
Taxes, 3, 38, 144, 173, 234, 236, 
253, 254, 269, 300, 305, 337, 402 



Temperance, 196. See Drinking 

Templars, 202, 205, 232 

Tengon, 253 

Terce, 107 

Testaments, Old and New, 192 

Theban Legion, 30 

Theology, 65, 67, 74, 78, 189, 207 

Thieves, 311. See Robbery 

Thomas a Becket, 73, 323 

Tithes, 7, 43, 130, 173, 217, 238, 

275, 408 
Tobit, 218 
Tolls, 6 

Tonsure, 50, 53, 71, 175 
Torture, 384. See Cruelty 
Tournaments, 180, 184, 185, 209, 

249, 253, 261. 263, 306, 308,311, 

320, 335, 341, 345 
Towns and townsmen. See Bour- 
geoisie 
Toys, 322 
Trade, 130, 384 
Translations, 89 
Transubstantiation, 22 
Travel, 9, 11, 55, 152, 155, 159, 

180, 181, 182, 183, 186, 188, 196, 

200, 207, 209, 233, 253 
Treasures, 140, 228, 330 
Treaties, 28, 300 
Trinity, 44, 76, 191 
Tristan et Iseult, 376 
Trivium, 67, 74, 77 
Troubadours, 189, 209, 253, 266, 

356, 374, 376. See Minstrels 
Trouveres, 132, 200, 207, 356 
Troy, 193 
Twins [Siamese], 197 

Universities, 67; charters of, 92, 
99; courts, 84; life at, 76; 
papacy and, 72, 87, 94; of 
Montpellier, 70; of Paris, 69, 
73, 187 

Usury, 50, 130, 143, 166, 188, 205, 
218, 230, 276, 326, 382. See 
Interest, Money-lending 

Utilitarianism, 78 

Vacancies, 153, 176; in curia, 153 
Vair and gray, 317, 343, 346 
Valets, 81, 82 
Vanity, 352 
Vassalage, 267 
Vegfece, 274 



INDEX 



441 



Venality, 72. See Bribery, Money, 
influence of 

Vendetta, 269 

Venison, 316 

Le Verbe qui se conjugue, 191 

Verses, 253 

Vespers, 107 

Vestments, 50, 147, 175. See Cos- 
tume 

V6zelay, 287 

Vicars, 45, 150 

Villein, 271, 346, 385. See also 
Peasants 

Violence, 275, 287. See Brutality 

Viollet-le-Duc, 117, 118, 161 

Virgil, 61, 192 

Virgin Mary, 13, 22, 30, 33, et 
passim 

Visions, 24, 25 

Visitation, Journal of, 54 

Waldenses, 50 



War, 4, 9, 140, 171, 184, 227, 229, 

243, 256, 259, 261, 262, 268, 281, 

287, 308, 334, 338, 384, 424; 

love of, 257; cost of, 339 
Washing of feet, 114 
Wealth of abbeys, 216; of cities, 

416 
Weddings, 361 
Whitehoods, 14, 17, 18, 205 
William of Armoriea, 5, 23, 74, 

99, 164, 167, 342, 425 
William Marshal, 181, 188, 306, 

311, 331 
William of Seignelay, 99, 156, 304 
Wills, 146, 175 

Windows, 225. See Stained-glass 
Wiser party (at elections), 136 
Woman, 199, 207, 210, 217, 223, 

293, 313, 350, 354, 356, 374, 384 
Word, The, 75, 191 
Wounded, in battle, 184, 278 



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M. A., Fellow, of New College, Oxford. With frontispieces and 
maps. 2 vols. 8vo. f 8.00 net, postpaid. 

The original (1886-8 edition) translated by MARGARET B. CoR- 
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The two volume edition presents a translation of the new and 
enlarged edition of Fournier's " Napoleon I.," published at Vienna, 
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rank of Napoleonic studies. 

Boston Transcript. — " Fournier's book has long had a front place in all 
Napoleon libraries." 

Literary Digest. — " This book must be taken as the final result of re- 
search and scholarship in relation to the works and plans of the great 
Corsican. It is bright and readable, and the translation is everything that 
could be desired. . . . The author his made a specialty of the Napoleonic 
era and handles his material with the certainty and confidence of a master. 
. . . To the general reader. . . . Professor Fournier's . . . impartial 
biograghy will reveal a new Napoleon, . . . Serious students . . . will 
hail with joy the rich apparatus furnished by this author. . . . There are 
appended to the two volumes isi pages of bibliography, while an estimable 
treasure will be recognized ... in the many letters printed and published, 
in the original language for the first time, which close the work," 

Neiu York Times Review. — Vivid and pictorial touches. . . . He 
examines the myths of the Bonapartists with scrupulous and unpartial care." 

C. D. Hazen*s Europe Since 1815 

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traces the histories of England, Russia, Turkey, and the lesser 
states separately, showing their continuous development. A biblio- 
graphy of 36 pages is provided. 

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